Nailed it. Absolutely nailed it.
I made pizza in my Big Green Egg once before. It was pretty good, but not the best I’ve ever made. I really wanted to get it right, so I took a pizza class with Chef Frank Mayo last week.
The Chef Mayo dough worked perfectly. It was a joy to work with, it stretched out nice and thin and it baked up crisp on the bottom and with good chew in the outer crust. Mine didn’t have quite the depth of flavor Chef Mayo’s did, because I had used dry yeast instead of a sour dough levain liked we did in class. The Italian Gourmet market, where I got the Caputo flour, says they’ve got a yeast starter I can use next time. Hopefully, that will give me the complex profile we had in the class room.
If you want to perfect your pizza skills, I’d suggest checking out LivingSocial’s pizza class. The one I took in DC was invaluable. I suspect they offer them around the country.
Once more, into the Egg.
I made the dough last night. It looked and felt just like it did in class, so I was hopeful.
After the over-night rise, everything still looked good.
I only needed half the dough for tonight. I now have two balls frozen for quick pizzas later this week.
I ran the Big Green Egg at 650° F, at Chef Mayo’s suggestion. The pizzas cooked fast, so I moved all my ingredients outside so I could assemble the pies next to the Egg.
Look how nice that crust is. Round, uniform, thin. No spring-back at all.
Topped off and ready for the Egg.
I have two peels, so I started assembling the second one while the first was still in the Egg.
The first pie was pepperoni, my son’s favorite. I left it in the Egg for 4 1/2 minutes. That was slightly too long. The crust got just a little bit over done.
The second pie was Italian sausage with caramelized onions.
It stuck a bit to the peel, so it came out a bit oblong. I took it out after 3 1/2 minutes and it was just right.
I’ve been working on pizza since the beginning of the year. At this point, I think I’ve got it down. This outing was 10X better than any chain pizza. It was up there with the best thin crust pies I’ve ever had.
Now I can start experimenting with toppings. Anyone have any interesting ideas?
2nd Hand Ideas 
Nice looking pies. Hard to beat pizza off the Egg. Got a dough recipe?
I’m using the one I learned in my pizza class. It’s a pretty typical dough. The two important tweaks are using a blend of Caputo and AP flour and using a good levain/sourdough starter. A 2:1 blend of Caputo and AP gives the dough the structure and elasticity you need for a thin crust while avoiding the spring-back you get with 100% bread flour. It makes for a really workable dough. I stretched a crust in class that was so thin, you could see the table through it. Chef Mayo said I could stop there.
The Caputo flour is a bit expensive. I might try to get the same effect by mixing bread and AP flour.
The levain gives the crust a lot more flavor than you get with dry yeast. The Italian deli where I got the Caputo has a live yeast culture they say I can use. I’ll try that next time.