I love all varieties of pizza, but I am especially fond of grandma pies. I'm really happy with how this one turned out, so I wanted to share my process. This dough method might be my new go-to for grandma and Sicilian styles of pizza. I'm looking forward to trying this out with other topping combinations.

For those of you who make this style of pizza regularly, what techniques/methods/toppings have you found that have really improved your grandma pies? I'd love to hear any thoughts/feedback that can help me continue improving my pizza game.

Here's the method –

For the Dough:

Dough ingredients:

• 440g AP flour
• 8g salt
• 3/4 tsp instant yeast
• 1.5 tsp DMP
• 1 tbsp EVOO
• 60g starter
• 330g cold water

Dough process:

Put all dry ingredients in a bowl. Mixed the starter and water in a separate bowl, then mixed the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients. Rested the dough for 15 minutes, then did a few sets of stretch-and-folds over the next 30-40 mins, then into the fridge for 24 hours.

I took the dough out of the fridge about 4 hours before baking. The dough sat on the counter in the proofing container for about an hour. I greased up my 14"x14" Lloyd grandma pan with a healthy amount of EVOO (~4tbsp), then I turned the dough into the oiled pan. I worked the dough toward the edges of the pan, covering the dough and taking 15 minute breaks when the dough would stretch no further. This took 3 repetitions over about 45 minutes. When the dough reached the edges of the pan, I covered it and let it rise for about 2-2.5 hours. I topped it and baked at 500F on a pizza steel for about 17 minutes (no par-bake).

Toppings

Pre-bake toppings:

• Shredded mozz – placed directly on the dough, all the way to the edge of the pan
• Pizza sauce – I used this Serious Eats pizza sauce.
• Roasted red pepper
• Thinly sliced yellow onion
• Burst cherry tomatoes seasoned with garlic confit and oregano*

*These cherry tomatoes are an absolute banger. Easily my new favorite topping. I made garlic confit the night before making pizza. While the dough was rising in the pan, I tossed about a pound of cherry tomatoes with some EVOO, oregano, salt, and pepper, and I place them on the highest rack of my oven under the broiler for about 10 minutes, shaking the pan periodically. Once the tomatoes began to burst and had taken on some nice color, I took them out of the oven and scraped them into a mixing bowl. I then crushed 5-6 cloves of confit garlic and mixed them in with the tomatoes. I did all this before I started heating my oven and pizza steel for the bake, maybe 2-3 hours before baking the pizza, and kept them in the fridge until topping time.

Post-bake toppings:

• Chiffonaded basil – added right when the pizza came out of the oven
• Ricotta seasoned with garlic confit and parm – To season the ricotta, I added 5-6 mashed cloves of confit garlic, a hefty amount of parm, salt, and pepper.
• Additional parm

Note: the burst tomato/garlic confit and the seasoned ricotta were both inspired by recipes from the recently-released King Arthur Book of Pizza.