Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza (21 page)

To create a crispier crust without burning the toppings, you can also try placing aluminum foil over the pizza while it bakes for the first few minutes. This keeps heat off the toppings so that they cook slower. Remove the aluminum foil after a few minutes to allow the pizza to bake until done.

Once you find the technique that works best for your oven and meets your preferences, write it down so that you can do it every time!

Serving Pizza

After removing the pizza from the oven, let it stand for a few minutes on a trivet until the cheese stops bubbling and the pizza cools slightly. This allows the toppings and cheese to set prior to cutting. Cut the pizza into manageable size slices and serve while still warm.

If you have one, serve the pizza on a perforated pan on a serving tray. The holes in the pan let steam and sauce out so that the bottom of the crust does not become soggy.

Serve the pizza as soon after cooking as possible. When cooked foods cool to room temperature, microbes begin to proliferate. The longer the food sits the greater the risk of problems. If you plan to serve the pizza at another time or if you are unable to serve the pizza right after cooking, follow the safe food storage rules listed on
page 50.

If the pizza has cooled substantially and you want it to be hotter, you can always reheat it. Just place the pizza in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven until the toppings begin bubbling, again. You may want to let it cool slightly before serving.

Storing Pizza

It is always hard to have exactly the right amount of pizza. You will typically either underestimate or overestimate how much people will eat.

In the early days of my marriage, my wife and I had a couple over as guests for dinner. We served a nice meal but served small portions. When it came time for dessert, the man and I had second helpings of the ice cream pie. I did not think that was significant because I always want seconds of dessert. A few months later, we went to their house for dinner. They served a
huge
buffet of food. There was food for eight and there were only four of us. I watched as this person downed plate after plate of food. My wife had known this man for many years so he was comfortable to be himself and to share his thoughts with us. Later in the meal, he mentioned that he was surprised we had served such a small amount of food when they visited. He further joked that he had been so hungry when he left that he had had to stop on the way home for a burger! Well, that did it! My wife was mortified and we have never served a small amount of food since. We
always
have leftover pizza and frequently quite a bit of leftovers. That one event altered our meal planning for our lifetime!

Well, we are not the only people that do not want to serve our guests too little food. As a result, you are probably more likely to have pizza left over each time you make pizza than to run out. I certainly always make more than I need. What do you do with that extra pizza? I will tell you right now that you do not throw it away!

Pizza is easy to store and you can easily serve it and eat it as leftovers. It is also possible to make some mistakes when storing pizza so I will share with you what I have found to work best. We will put the safe food storage tips to use (see
page 50
), once again.

When to Store Pizza

I will get right to the point. You do not want to let pizza sit out too long. In fact, you should store away the pizza as soon after you served it as is reasonably possible to do so. When you are entertaining, this is typically after everyone has eaten. My suggestion is that you take a break to put the pizza away after eating either before dessert or before lounging around. This gives the little food beasties the shortest time to take over your pizza and cause you issues! If that is not practical then put it away as soon as it is practical. I do not suggest that you act like a food police officer. Rather, just take reasonable steps to make sure that you can safely eat your pizza later.

It is worth mentioning that storing pizza while it is very hot can cause some problems. The cheese and toppings can be runnier when hot, you can burn yourself, and you might even damage the storage container (especially if you use plastic wrap). So, let the pizza come to room temperature before placing it in storage containers to avoid these problems. It’s been shown by experts that storing food that is at room temperature prior to being placed in the refrigerator or freezer maintains its taste better than food that is placed into storage when it is hot.

Refrigerating Pizza

The refrigerator is a great place to store pizza that you plan to eat within a few days. It is simple; just put it in there, right? Well, you can certainly put it in the fridge any way you want. Let me suggest, however, that you take just a little care in how you do it.

You make pizza with sauce and it has moisture in it. As food sits in the refrigerator, moisture in the food has a tendency to migrate out of the food and condense on the inside of the container. You have probably seen this on the inside lids on the containers of leftovers you have stored in the fridge.

Therefore, there are some basic precautions I would suggest you use when storing pizza in the refrigerator. The first suggestion is to minimize stacking. Putting the bottom crust of a pizza onto the saucy toppings is a sure way to make the crust of the leftover pizza soggy; so just do not do it. Second, I suggest that you minimize the air space left in your container. This will give the smallest possible space into which the moisture can propagate.

So, how do you do this and make it simple? Well, plastic bags and plastic wrap are your friends! You can use zip-seal plastic bags quite handily for storing pizza. One piece of pizza will typically fit nicely into a quart-sized storage bag. Two or three pieces of pizza will frequently fit into a gallon-sized storage bag. If you really want to eliminate air space around your pizza, you can wrap each piece individually in plastic wrap.

Here is one more trick I will tell you. After I place the pizza into the storage bags, I fold over the bag. If there is one piece of pizza in the bag, I fold over the excess space. If there are two or more pieces in the bag, I fold over between the slices so one faces the other. This folding lets me take out all the excess air and it keeps the bag touching the pizza on all sides. I have found that this reduces (or even eliminates) the condensation when the pizza has been refrigerated.

Having the pizza slices stored in bags like this gives you one additional benefit. It makes it easy to ask your guests if they want to take some pizza home! Since the pizza is stored individually or in groups of just a few pieces, it is very easy to transport. You will not be giving them one a storage container that they need to clean and return. In addition, you can easily give them only part of the leftovers so that they will not feel bad. Try it; it works!

Freezing Pizza

The freezer is a great place to store pizza that you do not intend to use within a few days. In fact, you can freeze pizza for several weeks and up to a month or so. The longer the pizza stays in the freezer the more chance it has for the moisture to migrate out of the pizza into ice crystals in the packaging. There is also more chance to get freezer burn. My suggestion is to keep the pizza in the freezer for the shortest reasonable time. I usually throw my frozen leftover pizza away if it has been in there longer than a month or so. If there are tons of ice crystals in the bag, I know that it is time to toss it out and make more fresh pizza!

You can prepare the pizza for the freezer in the same way you would for putting it in the refrigerator. However, you need to be even more conscientious about eliminating air space when you freeze the pizza. The pizza will last longer and taste the best if you eliminate air space by individually wrapping the pizza slices and by removing as much air as possible from the storage container. You can use plastic wrap to wrap each piece tightly and without any air space. There are certain types of plastic wrap specially formulated for freezer use and I have found them to work especially well. After wrapping each piece, place them into zip-seal freezer bags. Make sure to squeeze out as much of the air from the bag as possible.

If you have a vacuum packaging unit, it would be a great help in preparing pizza for being frozen. Vacuum packing takes out the air and greatly reduces the likelihood of condensation and freezer burn.