I love THIN THIN THIN crust pizza! I went to California Pizza last week and got free flatbread pizza for it being my first time (which it will be from now on when I go there…) and fell in love with their flatbread white pizza!
I love the garlic, bread, and cheese combination–especially on a crispy thin crust! My family loves more and different toppings and this recipe makes the best ‘personal’ sized thin pizzas #WINNING.
I doubled the recipe and we all had different toppings–my father-in-law had just olive oil, oregano, rosemary and small fresh sage leaves and I had ‘white’ (minced garlic and oil with mozzarella cheese), My husband had mushroom and onions and my daughter had pepperoni. They baked up fast in 500 degree oven on our pizza stone (well… about the ‘stone’…)
Terracotta pizza ‘stone’
If it looks suspiciously like a flowerpot bottom, you wouldn’t be wrong. We purchased it from Lowes about 3 years ago. It is unglazed terracotta (made in Italy) and we bought it and filled it with water and left it for 3 days and then rubbed it with olive oil and baked it a few times.
But over the years, it has picked up oil from the pizzas and it well seasoned and very thick–won’t break easily. An
d the tall lip allows for deep dish thick Sicilian pizzas with a lot of heavy toppings that won’t leak off the side like a flat stone. It think it was like only $15 and about 15 inches across the inside before the lip.
For the flatbread pizzas, it is a safe way to cook 2 of them at a time without worrying about toppings melting over the edge.
I was incredibly disappointed looking for flatbread pizza on the internet and many started with store bought pita. So, I guess you can go that route, but this wasn’t hard at all. And I love being able to freeze the pre-cooked dough for another day’s fresh pizza!
Kudos and credit to Mel’s Kitchen Cafe for the recipe! Let me know how you do with it.
- 1 tbsp active dry yeast (or 2 tsp. instant yeast)
- 1 tsp. granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup warm spring water ~100 degrees, warm not hot
- 1/2 cup warm milk ~100 degrees, warm not hot
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3 cups bread flour *approximately, may be 1/2 cup or so less
- Using 'active dry yeast' you'll need to put the yeast in the warm water for 3-5 minutes to activate it (you don't need to do that for instant yeast, you can skip to step 2).
- Add warm milk, oil, and sugar to the water/yeast mixture, and put in mixer.
- Using the dough hook, start with adding 2 cups of the flour slowly and let mix for 5 minutes before adding the salt. Add another 1/2 cup at 8 minutes and wait for it to mix~10 minutes to determine if you need the last 1/2-1/4 cup (if it adheres in a soft ball, you might not need all that flour).
- Use a soft scraper to remove the dough from the mixing bowl and put it out onto a hard surface and kneed for a minute or so and shape into a ball.
- Put 1 tablespoon of oil in a large bowl and roll the ball of dough around to cover it and then cover with plastic wrap and let it rise until it doubles (~1-2 hours depending on how warm your kitchen is).
- Remove the risen dough and pull it out onto a hard surface (I have a marble slab). Cut it in half and then each half in half and then each of those halves in half to make 8 equal pieces.
- Roll each piece into a small ball and cover and let sit for about 15 minutes (I covered it with the plastic wrap to it wouldn't form a hard shell). This relaxes the dough so that it
- Preheat a griddle and roll the balls out to 1/8th inch (~8 inches diameter). When the griddle is hot (not too hot) cook each one ~2-3 minutes on each side. If the griddle is too hot, the dough will get hard or burn, you want them soft and flexible.
- After cooking, stack them and cover with a clean cloth and either use them immediately or bring to room temperature and freeze them for use.
- Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Prepare the toppings and set up each pizza and bake each for ~5-7 minutes or until top is brown.
- 'White' pizza: 2 cloves finely minced and 4 tablespoons of oil, oregano, fresh thyme leaves and mozzarella cheese. Put all the toppings on and bake at 500 degrees for 5-7 minutes until brown on top.
- Other toppings: you can fry strips of green bell peppers in olive oil for a topping, or you can fry mushrooms, or onions. Add them separately or in combination. Any way you'd make a pizza, it is done in 5-7 minutes on high heat in an oven on a pizza stone.
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