Friday, May 18, 2012

Stuff That Works: Cast Iron Pizza Pan

Lodge, the cadillac of cast iron cookware, has come out with a 14" cast iron pizza pan. I got my daughter-in-law one for her recent birthday and when she gave it the thumbs up, I decided to get one myself (from Amazon). It works great. My daughter-in-law made her vegan pizza dough from scratch—she was only eight-and-a-half months pregnant; what else does she have to do?—but I used a Tofurkey vegan pizza as a base (comes as veggie-vegan pizza, ready to heat and serve) and added a bunch more stuff to it (spinach, peppers, seitan, mushrooms, broccoli, tomato, Eden's pizza/pasta sauce, vegan parmesan, nutritional yeast—totally forgot onion slices. Obviously, I went a little too heavy on the pizza/pasta sauce that leaked out the side when heated.).

I put the iron pizza pan on top of the sandstone pizza stone I've used for years and it came out beautifully. I put a very thin coat of coconut oil on the surface of the pan and the pizza lifted right off. Because I had to scrub pretty hard to get the baked-on juices off, I re-seasoned the pan after using. (All Lodge iron cookware comes pre-seasoned now, but it never hurts to keep it well seasoned.)

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2 comments:

  1. Nice pizza. We are enjoying ours as well. Jennifer cooked a couple of pizzas the other night on her cast iron pan and the dough came out really well. It just had more of that pizza dough texture than the lighter pans we used in the past could give it.

    The only difficulty we had was transferring the soft uncooked pizza onto the pre-heated cast iron pan. But we did it, and it worked.

    Daniel

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  2. I guess one of those large pizza peels (wood or metal) that the pros use will be next on the list. The Tofurkey base is firm -- hadn't thought about a soft dough transfer when making from scratch.

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