Can't help you with a homemade crust John, but we love pizzas made on tortilla shells. We had them again Sat. nite.

Here is my video showing pizza dough stretching, and you can use this method to make the dough as thin as you want without tearing it.

Here is the recipe I use:

Larsâ Whole Wheat Pizza

2 to 2-1/8 cups water
2 tsp malt powder (or 1 tsp sugar)
2 tbsp VWG (vital wheat gluten flour)*
1 cup semolina flour
1-5/8 tsp IDY (instant dry yeast)*
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups whole wheat flour
1-1/2 cups bread flour
1 tbsp salt

Pour 2 cups water into Kitchenaid mixing bowl, and add malt powder, VWG, and semolina flour. If you do not have VWG, it can be replaced with regular flour. Whisk together, and then add the IDY and olive oil. Add the whole wheat flour, and put the bowl on the mixer with the dough hook, and mix until blended. Then add the bread flour, along with the salt. If the dough is too stiff, add the rest of the water, one tablespoon at a time. You may have to adjust the amount of bread flour to get a dough that is smooth and comes away from the bowl. The dough will be slightly sticky when finished. Complete the kneading by hand for a few turns, and place the dough in a bowl greased with a bit of olive oil, and allow to rise at room temperature for 1-1/2 hours. Divide the dough into thirds, and place in oiled plastic bags in the fridge overnight.

Remove dough from fridge and allow it to rest at room temperature for one hour before handling. Stretch the dough into a 12-14â circle and bake on a pizza stone or pizza screen at 500ð for 8-10 minutes, or until done. If your oven will reach a higher temperature, that would be preferable and will reduce baking time. If your oven will only reach 400ð, you may want to melt a layer of cheese on the crust before adding other toppings.

When I baked them on the BGE, I parbaked the dough for 5 minutes on a screen at 425 degrees with a layer of Mozzarella/Provolone/Fontina cheese (whatever you like) and then grilled the topped pizzas with the BGE at 450 degrees. I think the oven temperature was higher than that, but that's what the BGE thermometer registered. Lately I've been using an infrared thermometer gun to check the real temp of the pizza stone, and it's hotter than the BGE thermometer suggests.

If you do not want whole wheat, you can substitute white flour for the whole wheat, but I like the flavor that it gives. I developed this recipe with help for the guys at the pizza making forum. A good many of the own or have owned pizza restaurants, and they are very helpful and generous with their information.

Lars

Thank you, Lars. The video is very good. I've never seen a pizza screen before; I'll stop at the store tomorrow and get one.

Before I read your post, I'd found someone's website about making super thin crust pizza. I made a dough using his recipe, which was very simple, and I have that resting in the refrigerator now. I'll try using that dough and your stretching method tomorrow, then I'll try making your dough.

Here is a link that might be useful: A website

Look up St. Louis MO pizza recipes, John. That version is supposed to be a very thin, cracker style of crust.

Teresa

Yes ^ Imo's pizza is known for their cracker thin crust. I haven't tried this recipe, but I'll link below.

I've had great luck with the one AnnT uses from Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. The edge puffs up but the base stays thin.

Here is a link that might be useful: St. Louis Style - no yeast

Here's another from a pizza forum, with pictures! No corn syrup, which I would prefer. It was quite the science experiment with ratios, with the original variation being preferred by the maker.

Here is a link that might be useful: Another recipe

We love the thin crust, no yeast pizza so I have been making the St. Louis crust with great success. I don't have a screen or a stone but have a round pan that is full of holes to let the heat in. Works great!

Here is a link that might be useful: Pizza crisper

Interesting, many of the super thin crust recipes involve rolling the dough thin, no yeast, and pricking (docking) the dough. I've never made pizza like that.

In my experience, olive oil in the dough makes a softer crust. I would use little or none (maybe 2-3 tsp rather than T). I generally use about 2T for 2 medium/large crusts to be on the crisp side, but probably not as crisp as you like. Lars' recipe above seems to have about the right amount since that makes 3. The semolina should add a nice texture too.

I've never seen or heard of putting corn syrup in a crust dough before (the one Alex linked) Can't speak to that.

I know I made ATK's version of St Louis pizza once, but can't for the life of me remember if we liked it or not. Might be a good starting point for the crust.

Here is a link that might be useful: atk stl pizza

Daughter and I tried making pizza tonight. We used the simple dough, that had rested in the refrigerator for 24 hours. After rolling each dough ball out to a thin and vaguely circular crust, we folded and crimped the edges, then docked the dough with a fork, slid it onto the hot pizza stone in a 500F oven, and sprinkled it lightly with mozzarella cheese. After par baking the crust, we took it out, added toppings, and completed baking the pizza.

The par baking was necessary because the thin raw dough was hard to slide off the floured peel. Had it been topped, the toppings would have ended up all over the oven, and my oven is already dreadfully dirty. The initial layer of cheese was meant to shield the crust from the wetness of the toppings.

One pizza was pesto, carmelized onions (daughter carmelized them ), and apples.

Another was corn, Italian sausage (previously cooked), and artichoke hearts.

The last was corn, tomato and basil (from our garden), and almonds. A little pesto base.

The crust was indeed about 1/8" thick. On some of the pizzas it was crisp enough to support the slice held by the edge, on others the slice sagged more. I need to par bake a little longer.

On one pizza, I forgot the docking, and it grew big bubbles during par baking. I just pricked those during topping.

Anyway, this was a good start. Next I will try Lars' dough. And make them round.

This post was edited by johnliu on Wed, Sep 10, 14 at 1:26

John, did you make the cracker-style crust with no yeast? Your pizzas look great! I want to try pesto as the base soon.

I plan to make this St. Louis/Imo's crust soon. I've only ever made pizza dough with yeast so this will be an experiment to see if I like it. I use Weed's sauce recipe that is similar to the sauce on the link from Alexa. She (Weed) is a former member here - and I miss you, Weed! Here's a shout-out to you!

Teresa

Good pizza! Interesting pizza! otherwise regular pizza can get boring.

HaHaa! Try to be careful with your pizza peel on an electric stove. Not the best way to keep your pizza warm. :-)

dcarch

This post was edited by dcarch on Wed, Sep 10, 14 at 9:00

teresa, I made very conventional pizza dough - all-purpose flour, yeast, water, oil - risen, portioned, then wrapped in plastic and put in the refrigerator for a day. I see that some of the St. Louis pizza recipes, like the one that FOAS posted, have no yeast.

dcarch, I don't know how that burn on my peel happened, but it was a long time ago, as I've had the peel for almost 20 years. I have two peels, the newer one is warped and split after just a couple years, while old faithful is doing fine.

Turns out that daughter made a lot of pizza at camp, so she has experimented with many toppings, but they use ready-made crusts from Sysco. She says in the camp kitchen they don't have time to make dough and crusts from scratch for 200+ campers and staff, and pizza is planned as an easy meal so the kitchen staff can do some cleaning and other maintenance stuff that night. They also can't make super thin crust pizza, because the slices have to be substantial enough to fill up hungry campers.

This post was edited by johnliu on Wed, Sep 10, 14 at 8:57

John, in St. Louis the really thin crust pizzas are made in well-used rectangular pans. The cheese they use is a specialty cheese that is locally available. St. Louis pizza is my absolute favorite, but it's not worth going to St. Louis for that. We do have a restaurant in Jacksonville, FL, that makes an authentic SL pizza but they are about 100 miles from us. That's doable, just not too often. Luckily they share a back fence with a Whole Foods store.

"The initial layer of cheese was meant to shield the crust from the wetness of the toppings. "

A thin coating of EVOO as the base will stop the toppings from soaking through.

John,

I hope I'm not to late but I thought I would shed some light on the subject of St Louis style pizza as I've been eating it most of my life. STL style pizza is something people either love or hate; I love it because it says "home" to me.

The most well known is Imo's but all STL style pizza have the following things in common.

The crust: the crust contains absolutely NO yeast. It's almost the thickness of a taco shell and is very crispy, much like a cracker. When it is rolled out, it is always docked and par baked.( Think tostada shells)

The sauce: Very rich, sweet, lots of basil and a deep dark red.

The cheese: Hoffman's Provel. Can't have STL pizza without it. Provel is a processed cheese product made with provolone, cheddar, and swiss. It has a slightly smokey taste and is very buttery when melted. Mozzarella is NEVER used on an STL pizza.

Finishing touches: Pizza is assembled on par baked crust, topped with a mixture of powdered romano cheese mixed with oregano, transferred directly to a chain-drive conveyor oven without a pan and cut in squares when done.

Thanks! I'm even more convinced that I need to try an unleavened dough.

"Thanks! I'm even more convinced that I need to try an unleavened dough."

Why? Are you Jewish?

dcarch :-)

Passover pizza?

Well, I made the exact pizza you're looking for last night by accident!!!
For 2 big pizzas :
(in a bread machine, I put)
180ml water
300g bread flour
1 sachet instant yeast
1 tsp salt.
I forgot to put in any oil.

Rolled out very thin, it stayed rigid with the following topping :
Tomato sauce, ham, mozz, salt.
DH had tomato sauce, chorizo, anchovies, olives, salt.

I was wondering if yours were perhaps a little overloaded? Could that make it more difficult to get a rigid pizza? It seems very American to make the toppings super-generous -not very Italian!

Islay, even in St. Louis the thin pizzas are lightly dressed. I don't think that crust can take very many toppings. Yours sounds really good!

Made eight thin crust pizzas for Halloween party. I'm getting, if not good, at least efficient at this. Make the dough, leave it in the refrigerator overnight, divide and roll out to about 1/8", dock all over with a fork, parcook and stack the crusts, then top and bake in an assembly line operation.

Most popular:
- Bacon, blue cheese, carmelized onion. I dusted the onions with sugar while carmelizing.
- Pear, arugula, mozzarella cheese.

Not sure if you were looking for another but back in my hometown Gondola Pizza had an ultimate thin crust. When I moved away I used a copycat recipe from a local school recipe book. I loved it (have not had in forever since gluten is off the table for me).
The Original "Gondola" Thin Crust Pizza
1 tsp sugar
1 pkg traditional yeast
1/4 cup oil
1 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup warm water
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper

Combine first 5 ingr. in bowl, then add warm water. In separate bowl, combine remaining ingr. and add slowly to dough. Knead and let rest 20 minutes covered with clean towel.
Roll out very thin on well floured surface (as thin as you can in order to pick it up). Place on floured pan and freeze a minimum of three hours.
Have all topping ready on counter and place on pizza very quickly so as not to tell dough start to thaw.
Bake in preheated 425 degree oven 15-20 mins. Check bottom of crust so as not to get too brown.
yield: two pizzas

I make my thin pizzas with flour tortillas.

I think they call them bar-style pizza

I start it in my cast iron skillet - the big one if I'm making them for the family, the small one if it's just me.

Then when it's all assembled, I move the pan to the oven to broil it for a few minutes. Slide it on to a cutting board to cut and serve

Very very good. a hit with the grandkids, easy to make.

I keep pizza sauces and Italian seasonings in the pantry, cheeses in the freezer, and we always have bags and bags of tortillas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Use Your Cast Iron Pan and a Tortilla to Make World Class Bar-Style Pizza in Under 12 Minutes

That's so funny because the other day I wanted some pizza so bad, it was just me alone to eat. I had tortillas and pizza quick sauce and all the other makings for pizza. I put the tortilla in a skillet, sauce and toppings. I turned the heat to below half way (electric stove controls) and covered the pan and cooked it on top of the stove. It was delicious! So you really don't even have to put it in the oven if you don't feel like it. I don't know if this would be anything like the OP wanted but I thought I'd throw this out there for a quick pizza anytime you have a craving! YUM!

A flour tortilla is not unlike some of the more extreme recipes for super thin crust pizza. Flour, salt, lard, water. No yeast, it is unleavened. Makes good sense for a pizza!

While I don't like thin pizza crust I found lars video interesting. It seems that patience is the key. I tend to be in a hurry and end up stretching the dough too hard and getting holes. Next time I'm going to try lars method.

This post was edited by debrak2008 on Tue, Nov 4, 14 at 17:40

I haven't been stretching - I just roll it to an approximately round or rectangular shape, depending on what I'm aiming for, and sometimes I decide what I'm aiming for after I see where I'm going . . . Stretching takes more skill and time than I have. We mostly make pizza for parties, sometimes of bottomless teenagers, so I have to serve four or eight or twelve pizzas over a one hour period, and SWMBO isn't bashful about telling me when the supply of fresh pizza into the dining room Is Not Keeping Up. So I prep the toppings ahead of time - get the onions carmelized, bacon and sausage and chicken cooked, cheese shredded, pears sliced and sugared, sauce cooked, greens picked, melted butter in a bowl with a brush, garlic olive oil with another brush, everything is at the ready. Then I roll out and par-bake all the bare pies, and when guests arrive, start pulling pies from my stack. Apply topping and slide pie into the oven, when it is ready to come out the next one is ready to go in. I have two peels and three pizza pans. A second pizza stone would improve my output. But as it is I can send one pizza into the dining room every five minutes roughly.

J. Kenji López-Alt of Serious Eats is an obsessive researcher into recipes. He makes America's Test Kitchen look like fast food in comparison - his column on chocolate chip cookies said he went through 32 lbs. of flour in a weekend testing his recipe!

He's always an entertaining read and his photos provide clear illustrations to the text. John, I thought you and others here might enjoy his recent column titled "Use Your Cast Iron Pan and a Tortilla to Make World Class Bar-Style Pizza in Under 12 Minutes".

Last year he did an enthusiastic recommendation on a steel baking slab that he says far outdoes pizza stones, but it's a hefty sucker and seriously super-heavy - to the point where it was recommended one just leave it on the BBQ and not even try to use it in an oven, where it could be easily dropped and break somebody's foot (not to mention the damage a large super-heated metal slab could do to your kitchen flooring!).

Here is a link that might be useful: SeriousEats.com: Use Your Cast Iron Pan and a Tortilla to Make World Class Bar-Style Pizza

I've been using a cast iron skillet and flour tortillas to make pizzas for almost 30 years - starting back when I was in design school in Texas. I never thought to bake them, however, and I usually fold them over to eat them. I've always called them "pizza quesadillas". I prefer a slightly thicker crust, which is why I make pizza dough, but the tortillas work in a pinch. I generally make quesadillas of some sort a couple every week, but lately Kevin has suggested that I make my own tortillas, which I only do on occasion. Once I bought a package of tortillas that had been made with olive oil, and they were a bit tough, which was why Kevin made his suggestion. I wish I could make a batch of dough and store it in the fridge until I was ready for the tortillas, but the BP loses its power. I only buy small packages of tortillas so that I can replace them every other week.

Debra, thanks for your comment on my video! I never thought of patience being required to stretch dough, but then I am a tremendous amount of patience when I am doing something creative. I would not have patience with a steel baking slab, however, as I consider it too dangerous. I have enough near-accidents as it is!

Lars

John, you have to try pear, gorgonzola and prosciutto!

I do the corn tortilla rather than flour for quickie pizza.

Arkansas_girl, I hadn't thought of cooking them on top of the stove.
We love pizzas made on tortilla shells, loaded to the gills. I bake them on a cookie sheet turned upside down and preheated. A skillet on the stove would be a great way of making them.

We made pizzas on tortilla shells yesterday on the little electric grill/griddle. We use this outside all summer. First time with pizza and I used the griddle side and covered it with an aluminum foil pan. Worked perfectly without heating up the kitchen.

Not sure what the allure of a cracker like pizza crust is but if you want to be able to roll a crust thinner, put a couple of tablespoons of corn meal in it per cup of flour....it cuts the glutin.

To me a good crust is a part of the pizza.

It just happens to be really good. It does not taste like a cracker at all. Good un-cooked flour tortillas make a great pizza for a crowd. Same ingredients as pizza dough. I get puffs and bubbles...good topping ingredients and can make a dozen in an hour when family visits next week when i've just worked 12-14 hrs. I can prep everything next Sunday for pizza monday and taco tuesday.

In southern Arizona, there's a local specialty called a crisp or a tostada (although unlike other tostadas) . A large flour tortilla with cheese run under the broiler. Sometimes with some other toppings, but a plain cheese crisp with salsa is a thing of beauty. I wish our local restaurants would serve these.

(Spell check wants to say Photostat instead of tostada!)

I am sure it's good....but it's not a pizza....any more than putting pizza sauce and cheese on an English muffin makes it a pizza.
And, Sushi....what does spell check know anyhow?....almost as bad as autocorrect.

I agree with Linda that it is not really a pizza when made on a tortilla, which is why I call it a quesadilla or tostada. Tex-Mex tostadas are normally made with corn tortillas and quesadillas with flour tortillas, but in central Mexico a quesadilla is made with masa and is sometimes folded over (like an empanada) and deep fried. I've had pineapple empanadas in SE Mexico (state of Tabasco, I think), but I cannot remember whether they were flour or corn. I hate pineapple on pizza, but it's great in an empanada, where it is the main filling and does not have cheese.

Shhhh, don't tell Jacques Pepin.

Margherita Tortilla Pizzas

Pizza on a super thin crust, sometimes a tortilla, is a Bar Pizza or Bar Pie.

Bar pizza is a type of pizza that is typically found in
bars, pubs, and old-school restaurants mainly in New England and other
parts of the Northeast. Unlike a traditional Neapolitan or New
York-style pizza, a bar pie is usually small in size (typically 10
inches in diameter), and cooked in a pan. The crust is often
cracker-like and many, if not most places that serve bar pizza use sauce
out of a can. The cheese on top of a bar pie is often greasy and
browned as it extends all the way to the edge of the crust.

We make them all the time, quick and really good. I heat the tortilla in a hot, cast iron frying pan with some oil, then add sauce and cheese and seasonings, and put the whole thing into the oven to broil until the cheese is golden and bubbly.

If I make a lot, I'll slide them onto a greased cookie sheet so I can broil two at a time.

I also use naan, which is more sturdy. I follow the same procedure, heating it up in a cast iron pan before I add the toppings and broil it.

I had forgotten all about this! UGH! My memory is so bad these days :( Glad it got bumped up! These are delicious!

I have to say though, Sleevendog, that does look good, pizza or no :-)

From what I've read on the net, the word pizza originally meant flat bread so it seems anything goes!