So you don’t have a huge pizza oven in your home. Who does? What you have is a cast iron skillet and that, along with your favorite  pizza toppings,  is really all you need.

The tradition of pizza of just as varied and storied as there are options you can find for toppings. This skillet pizza recipe gives you the foundation for a great tasting skillet pizza but leaves room for you to use your imagination and make it your own.

One great thing about a cast iron pizza instead of pizza baked in the oven is that when you don’t want to turn on your oven, like during the summer months when it’s hot you can still satisfy your pizza craving.

There are two ways to go about making a cast iron skillet pizza, I’m just going to give you the easy 1,2,3 recipe and perhaps update this or share the other from scratch pizza recipe. On second thought, I’ll do my best to combine them into one recipe, if that makes sense.

Ingredients

(Dough)

First off, you will need pizza dough. That will either be store bought pizza dough that you will have to knead and roll out, or you can make it yourself…

2 cups all-purpose or bread flour	1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1 teaspoon rapid-rise yeast	3/4 – 1 cup water
1 teaspoon sea salt	2-3 tablespoons olive oil

If you want a thin pizza crust or a thick and fluffy pizza crust, i’ll leave that up to you in the kneading and rising process. However, the thinner the crust the greater possibility for a charred and burnt pizza. You want to mix the water (start a 3/4 cup and see how it goes), sugar, salt and yeast in a bowl and allow a few minutes for the yeast to activate, bubble and foam.

After that add your flour and begin to mix. If you have kitchen mixer, that’s great. I usually make all my dough by hand as that’s how I was taught and how I watched my grandmother and great-grandmother do it in the kitchen years ago.

This is where starting with only 3/4 cups of water come in because the dough may be a bit too dry, so you add more little by little (by teaspoon) until you have a malleable consistency and can make a soft ball of dough.

Bonus: Something I do occasionally is add a bit of basil or other herbs to the mix before forming the dough to give extra flavor. You get a bit creative here.

When done you can set the dough in a bag and let it rise for about an hour. Technically, you should*  knead the dough again and then set it in the fridge for about an hour before using the pizza dough. To be honest I rarely if ever follow this. You may want to do this, but my pizzas come out fine.

(Pizza sauce)

1 1/4 – 1 1/2 Cups tomato sauce	1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon parsley flakes	1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried marjoram	1 1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
1/2 Teaspoon onion powder	1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon oregano	1/2 teaspoon rosemary

Combine all that together in a bowl or atop the stove for a more sophisticated taste. When buying tomato sauce at the store honestly I usually go with something that has a little extra, like a garlic lovers tomato sauce.  I almost never go with the basic sauce.

Now for the pizza toppings!

Ingredients

Pizza toppings vary wildly among people so you can go with whatever suits you, I personally loved pineapple, chicken with mushroom, mozzarella and basil while my good friend totally abhorred pineapple on pizza. When we ordered out, it was always two pizzas! Luckily, that’s usually the special deal, along with a 2 liter of soda and some buffalo wings. So no harm really.

Pizza Toppings

1/2 – 3/4 pound cooked, diced chicken*	1/2 cup crimini mushroom sliced
1/4 Cup red onion, diced	8-10 ounces mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup green bell pepper diced	2 Tablespoons fresh basil**

*For more savor mix thigh and breast meat. **For a different approach to basil use whole leaf basil

As you can tell I load my pizzas.  You can always skim some from the top, if it’s too much for you. Most items are optional but as much as possible gets on there.

Now to bring this all together, if you haven’t seasoned your skillet appropriately, you may need to lightly oil it. But I am going to assume you season your skillet. Rollo out your dough into a circle larger than your skillet. Depending on your mood you can have a pizza “pie” with the crust coming up the sides or you can roll over the excess to your level of contentment. Any excess dough cut away with a knife.

Once your dough is in the cast iron, coat with pizza sauce (to your liking), then load those toppings! When ready send over to the stovetop for a quick trick to help give you that crust you’re looking for. Turn on your range to high heat and knock the cold off the cast iron and simultaneously get the pizza crust the prep work it need sot finish spectacularly in the oven. Hopefully, you’ve preheat the oven by now 400 degrees is fine enough but sometimes 425 or even higher is required. After about somewhere between 3-5 minutes on the stove send your pizza to the oven for the remainder.

When the crust is golden brown and the cheese has melted to your satisfaction take it out and prepare to feast! Depending on the temp and your preference, this should take no more than 15 to 20 minutes.

Enjoy.