I had a craving for Pizza recently and didn’t feel like buying over $9000 worth of quality toppings/produce/shredding cheese/etc so I went to Papa Murphys. I figure paying $15 in a retail setting would net me sweet [expletive deleted] all in terms of food, so I settled on the “freshest” pizza I could find.
Since I’m currently remotely located, the only Oven I have is a Secura Digital Turbo Convection Oven
(which will get it’s own review at a later date).
If you have no idea what this is, it’s the same type of oven that you see on Mr T hocking on late night television.
For those that have this type of oven, you know it’s a directional weapon. It browns beautifully on top, but the bottom usually stays anemic. This is a big issue when it comes to pizza. I did buy the Accessory Kit
which comes with a Pizza Pan and despite the reviews stating that it does brown the crust, it doesn’t. It doesn’t come close. I literally burned the top (on purpose) to try to get a nice bottom crust. It didn’t work.
I needed a pizza stone. However, I didn’t want to go out and buy one since the Secura Oven is quite small. Having a small pizza stone is useless.
So what do I do? Live with soggy pizza?
Yeah right.
The only thing I really need is a hot surface to crisp up the crust. I use a cast iron pan to make grilled cheese all the time, so I figure what harm could it do to a pizza? Papa Murphys pizzas are pretty big. There’s no chance in hell they’re gonna fit in the Secura, so I have to cut it up. This isn’t a big deal since I don’t have a 20″ cast iron pan.
The pizza gets quartered and in it goes on the “Pizza Pan” from the kit for 6 minutes to cook the top at 500F. After 6 minutes, the top is quite nicely cooked, but the crust is literally raw. So raw it sticks to the paper pan it comes on. If you finagle it a bit it does come off. Pluck the pizza and carefully arrange it the mess onto a Cast Iron pan. You do have a Cast Iron pan that’ll fit a quarter of a pizza on Medium High heat that’s hot right now right? Anyway… cook for a few minutes checking frequently for a nice golden brown. Once it is, pull it, slice it and serve it.
And that’s how you get pretty awesome pizza using a DH (and Mr T) stamp of approval’ed oven and a cast iron pan without the need for a pizza stone. Don’t expect to serve a huge crowd, but it’ll serve one to two people quite well.
