If you’re going to be serious about creating authentic bar pizzas from your kitchen you are going to need a few important tools of the trade. Here is my master list of everything I use all in one place, use this as your Bar Pizza Home Cook Buyers Guide. Looking for the recipe? Click here South Shore Bar Pizza Recipe.
The Hardware
The Pan – The only pan I can recommend for making bar pizza at home are these 1×10 pre seasoned straight sided Lloyd Pans , they are great! These pans are best for home cooks because they are dark and heavy, helping spread heat evently. If you are using shiny pans you may have to adjust temperature and would need a stone.
Once I started using Lloyd pans I no longer had to place the pizza back onto the stone or baking steel to crisp up the bottom. These work great on there own, no stone needed. Lloyd pans are a bit pricey but well worth it if you are serious about making amazing pizza at home.
**Just wipe them out with a paper towel when done cooking, do not wash with soap and water!
A pizza peel – These wooden ones also work great as a nice serving tray.
Pan Grippers – Work great for easily removing your pans from the oven. Also saves cabinet space compared to using a pizza peel.
Pizza Cutter – I prefer to use these blade style cutters but you can use a wheel cutter too, just be careful because sometimes the wheels tend to push the cheese off. If you’re going all in, check out this sweet Pizza Knife
Cheese Grater – You 100% NEED to grate your own cheese if you want to make a great bar pizza. Store bought pre-shredded cheese is coated in cellulose, this prevents clumping. It can burn up and have a funny taste at high temps.
When it comes to cheese graters you have a few options here. You can go oldschool. Mechanical Rotary, or Electric Rotary.
I use a rotary cheese grater like this and it saves me a lot of time, I love it! If you have a KitchenAid Stand Mixer this Slicer Attachment is awesome too.
Takeout boxes or Fiber Molded Plates – this may seem crazy, but if you’re going to save any of your pizza for a later time, it is based stored on a paper plate or takeout box. The paper actually absorbs some of the moisture preventing your pizza from becoming soggy. This is why all the greats still serve takeout on thick paper plates in brown paper bags! If you store your leftover slices in a plastic container you will get some condensation. This will result in excess moisture on your crust!
Kitchen Scale – I use this to make sure each piece of dough is 6.5oz. Also a more accurate way to measure your flour.
A good measuring cup – I you don’t have a nice set of measuring cups I’d start here
Cooking thermometer – This will help you make sure the water is at 110 degrees. If you don’t have one don’t panic, run the water over your hand, you want it about as warm as you, if you no longer feel the water it is about your body temperature and that will work.
Fine Mesh Colander – To strain the extra water out of your crushed tomatoes.
Thin Spatula – this helps to peel the pizza out of the pan and not mess up the laced crust. This is just a good metal icing spatula. There are also “blender” and “jar” spatulas out there that work well.
Dough Cutter – these are nice for dividing up your dough, much better than using a knife which will rip and tear your dough
Dough Docker – this pokes even holes in your dough, yes you can also just use a fork but these are fun.
Storage Containers for dough – to store your dough
Oven Gloves – Makes it much easier to hold the pan while popping the cooked pizza out. When I used traditional oven mitts my thumbs would smoosh the pizza, nobody likes that..
Stand Mixer – for mixing batches of dough, the Kitchenaid seams to be the industry standard for home cooks
Bluetooth Speaker – For playing Dream Theater, Van Halen or Italian Cooking Playlists on Spotify. I also like this one.
The Sauce
The sauce is incredibly simple. Pickup any good quality can of crushed tomatoes at the grocery store and some fine sea salt. Strain the majority of water out using a fine mesh colander. I use one like this. Place sauce in a bowl or container and stir in some sea salt to taste. That is all you need. You don’t even have to cook this sauce, it cooks on the pizza! My personal favorites are Pastene Ground Peeled Kitchen Ready Tomatoes (not chunky if you can find it) and Pastene California Pizza Sauce . After you’ve spread your sauce out on the dough, sprinkle on some dried oregano to taste. Don’t use cheap oregano, it doesn’t taste good. As with everything else, use the best ingredients you can find.
The Dough
The trick to achieving that buttery crispy crust is adding Corn oil and melted butter, along with minimal kneading. Most recipes leave that out. Nothing ever compared to what I’d get at a local bar pizza joint until I tried this. For butter I prefer KerryGold Salted Butter
Also, most of the local pizza shops coat their pans with Cottonseed Oil, though it can sometimes be hard to find. I have coated my pans with corn, canola and olive oil all with good results but I prefer corn oil for the added flavor. At high temps the oil in the pan actually fries the dough while cooking.
Flour Selection
For a crisp, buttery, cracker like crust like The Lynwood I use Gold Medal All Purpose flour. For a slightly softer, chewier crust you can use bread flour. It’s a subtle difference and I encourage you to try both. This recipe is super easy and you can interchange All Purpose/Bread flour without changing any measurements.
Yeast
Don’t worry about what type of yeast you have on hand. You can interchange Active Dry for Instant Bread Machine yeast without changing any measurements. This is the yeast I have been using with great results. If you use the Instant bread machine yeast, just mix it right in with the dry ingredients. Then add the wet ingredients. The only difference between the active dry yeast and the instant yeast is the size. Instant yeast is much finer and will dissolve well mixed right into the dry ingredients.
Now that you have all of the supplies, let go make sure South Shore Bar Pizza!
(*This site contains affiliate links to help pay for my bar pizza habit)