best pizza vlog (and easy recipe)

This will forever go down as the best pizza recipe to us (or, at least until we create the next one) and THIS is our great pizza vlog. Beginning with a morning workout (life’s about balance), a trip to the grocery store, and a dinner full of pizza while it snows in New York City. 

In an effort to cook at home every single day this month, we’ve made this deep dish pizza recipe five times (count’em FIVE TIMES) now. Which has us asking ourselves, should we start a #cookingshow??

THE DOUGH
Here’s our easy, basic dough recipe:
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon RapidRise yeast
1 teaspoon white sugar
Olive oil as needed
(adapted a tiny bit via What’s Gaby Cooking)

Combine the flour, salt, yeast, and sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, and then add 1 cup warm water, mix on low until a ball forms, add more flour if necessary.

Roll the dough into a tight ball and place it in an oiled bowl. Drape a kitchen napkin or towel on top, and leave to proof in a warm spot until the dough doubles in size, about 2 hours.

For the rest of the pizza, here’s what we did! 

THE SAUCE
You can really use any kind of sauce here, but we chose to make our own. This part is really to your own taste, but here’s a good starting point:
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp crushed minced garlic
4 Tbsp tomato paste (adjust to taste)
1 (15 oz) can crushed tomatoes
2 tsp dried oregano
salt and freshly ground pepper

Saute garlic in olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat and stir in tomato paste. Cook for 1 minute while stirring. Stir in crushed tomatoes, oregano, add any other seasoning you’d like (we added Tastes Like Pizza) and season with salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer for 5 minutes to thicken.

THE PIZZA
Once the dough is done proofing and your sauce is ready, you can build your pizza! First, preheat the oven to 500° F with an oven rack positioned in the lower third of the oven. Prepare a 12-inch cast iron skillet with 3 tbsp olive oil (this will give the pizza a really nice, chewy-crispy crust – YUM!). Then, evenly spread the dough in the pan so it touches all sides.

Generously brush the dough with olive oil and then pour 1 cup of pizza sauce on top. At this point, you can add any topping you’d like to *slightly protect* from the heat (as anything on top of the pizza will be exposed to direct heat when the pizza is in the oven). We added some parmesan cheese, yellow bell pepper, onions, cooked bacon, and then added our mozzarella (about 8oz, diced into 1/2 inch cubes) covering the entire pizza all the way to the skillet – this will allow some of the cheese to crisp up, and who doesn’t love that?

Add the remaining toppings (Calabrese salami, sliced mushrooms, black olives, and MORE parmesan cheese in our case) and then drizzle with olive oil. Send the pizza into the preheated oven for 15-18 minutes.

Last but not least, ENJOY ??? We hope you enjoyed our best pizza recipe and vlog!

Love,
Chris + Brock

P.S. catch up on our latest videos including Chris’ discussion on his identity, our NYC home tour, and what happened to us + why we quit.