Pan Pizza 🍕-- Based on J. Kenji Alt Lopez's recipe on Serious Eats

I've made this dough enough that I know the quantities by heart. I've riffed on it ad nauseum, subbing in different flours, different yeast amounts, different levels of attention I put into making it, etc, and it's always good. Even a not-my-best pizza is still tasty pizza.

Then I taught it to my boyfriend Greg, so now I don't even have to do any work and I still get homemade pizza on the regular. I'm basically living the dream.

If you have a stand mixer, you can make this pizza. It takes about 2-3 hours to rise in a warm place, but only 15 minutes to bake.

Ingredients

• 400 g all purpose flour
• 100 g whole wheat flour (or rice flour or durum flour or just add more AP flour)
• 8 g sea salt
• 5 g instant yeast
• around 1/2 cup olive oil
• 347 g water
• your favorite tomato sauce--*see note
• sliced mushrooms, onions, olives, peppers, garlic, and zucchini (or your favorite toppings)

*For a basic topping, roughly puree 1 28-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil and kosher salt to taste.

Directions

1. Combine flour, salt, yeast, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in bowl of stand mixer. Add water to mixer and mix on medium speed until it comes together and no dry flour remains. Increase speed to medium-high and mix until the dough is stretchy and smooth, about 6 minutes. The dough should stick to the bottom of the bowl but pull away from the sides.
2. Generously drizzle a 13 x 18-inch rimmed baking sheet with olive oil--eyeballing this is fine! Transfer dough to the sheet and rub top with olive oil so it doesn't stick. Cover dough with a flat piece of plastic upcycled from a plastic bag (save and wash this for reuse later). Turn the oven on to its lowest setting and let preheat for 2 minutes. Immediately turn off oven! We don't want it scorching hot, just moderately warm. Allow the dough to rise in the warm oven until it has spread out to touch nearly each rim of the baking sheet, about 2 hours or so.
3. Once the dough has gotten sufficiently poofy, remove from the oven and preheat oven to 520 F. Carefully remove the plastic. Using oiled hands and being as gentle as possible to maintain air bubbles, push and stretch the dough into the corners of the pan by pressing out from the center and lifting each corner and stretching it beyond the edge of the pan. It should pull back until the pan is just filled with dough. If you notice the dough resists, let it relax 20 minutes and try again.
4. Top the pizza as you like! This is delicious with marinara sauce, a few sliced vegetables, garlic, and something salty like olives. Add vegan cheese if you like, but I usually don't bother. Bake until bottom is crisp and top surface is bubbling, 15 to 20 minutes total. Allow to cool at room temperature for 5 minutes.