These skillet pizzas are so easy to make and so good! Plus, they are perfect for a family with lots of different tastes. My husband and I will both eat most things, but my daughter is more of a meat lover, and my son is a vegetarian, so the same pizza definitely will not work for everyone! The great thing about making your own pizza dough is that it really isn’t much more difficult to make several pizzas than it is to make just one, and it saves a lot of money. Unfortunately, my son was away the night we made these, so I don’t have his pictured, but I am sure it would have been a vegetarian masterpiece. My daughter’s was the usual pepperoni and cheese, and my husband and I both had pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, and cheese. You wouldn’t have to do this, but I sauteed the mushrooms and green peppers in a little olive oil before adding them to the pizza.
The dough itself is the olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, which is one of my favorite cookbooks. It makes about four pounds of dough, which would probably be about ten of these little pizzas. The great news is that it keeps in the refrigerator for 12 days, so you can eat pizzas several times or even make something else with it. The skillets I used are six inch cast iron, which are perfect for all sorts of individual recipes. The flour I used was soft white wheat, and I wanted it to be light, so I milled it on the pastry setting. I find that I love the soft white wheat. It has less protein than hard wheat, but works just like all purpose flour when milled on the pastry setting. The recipe serves three, but you have enough dough to make many more. I used traditional pizza toppings in the recipe, but you could top them with pretty much anything.
- 2¾ cups lukewarm water
- 2 packets rapid rise yeast
- 1½ Tbsps. Kosher salt
- 1 Tbsp. sugar
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 6½ cups soft white wheat milled on the pastry setting
- 4 oz. fresh mushrooms sliced
- ½ green bell pepper, chopped
- 1Tbsp. olive oil, plus more for brushing the skillets
- 2 Tbsps. marinara sauce (Use your favorite homemade or bottled.)
- Pepperoni (about 27 slices)
- ¾ cup mozzarella cheese
- In a large container, stir together first six ingredients until all the flour is moistened.
- Cover loosely and let rise for at least two, but no more than five hours.
- Dough may be used at this time or may be refrigerated for up to twelve days. It is easier to work with cold.
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Saute mushrooms and pepper in one tablespoon olive oil until tender.
- Brush each skillet lightly with olive oil.
- Remove three portions of dough from the container, each about the size of your fist. Reserve remaining dough for another use.
- Place each dough portion on a floured cutting board. Form a ball with each portion and dust with more flour until dough is no longer sticky.
- Press or roll and stretch dough into three six-inch circles and place in prepared pans.
- Spread each crust with two tablespoons marinara sauce.
- Top with mushroom and pepper mixture.
- Place Pepperoni over the mushrooms and peppers.
- Top with cheese.
- Bake for approximately 8 minutes or until brown
