I wasn't a pizza snob until I tasted my first thin-crust pizza from a little pizzeria on Union Square in Manhattan. Each enormous slice was a masterpiece of minimalism: cheese, mushrooms, a thin sheen of oil I hadn't ordered but enjoyed anyway and a crust that stayed crispy on the bottom despite the moist ingredients piled on top.

After that, I mostly snubbed lesser pies from nationwide franchises and the frozen-food section, limiting my pizza consumption to gourmet varieties cooked in wood-fired or stone ovens. For me, the crust was what mattered, and these were the only ovens that seemed to produce them. The crust had to be thin, but it had to taste and feel like bread. And it had to be the main attraction, not just an insignificant cardboard template for a heap of veggies, sauce and cheeses.

Pizza with pizzazz

I came to believe that the home I built in southeast Utah would be incomplete until I built my own pizza oven in whatever portion of my 80-acre property I could carve into a backyard.

When the recession began eating away at my savings, I abandoned that idea and resigned myself to spending $10 for a personal pizza at Zak's restaurant 54 miles away in Moab whenever business took me to that town. But those infrequent meals only reinforced my cravings and my determination to find an affordable way to make first-class pizza at home.

Online research revealed that thousands of other picky pizza lovers wanted the same thing. I detected a consensus among cooks that a pizza stone would deliver crisp-crust pizza, but the stones I found at many Web sites started at $25 and went up from there.

Some cooks suggested a cheaper alternative: buying an unglazed quarry stone at a well-stocked home-improvement store.

Saltillo tile isn't quarry stone, but it's made of clay that's been fired in a superhot oven. And I just happened to have about 60 untreated saltillo tiles left over from installing my kitchen and living room floors. I was willing to risk a cracked tile and ruined pizza to save myself nearly $25 — or more.

Worth the wait

Next I had to find a recipe for thin-crust, stone-baked pizza, and cyberspace was crawling with them — all claiming to produce the best pizza but all of them different from one another.

I settled in for a full day of experimentation with various types of flour and yeast, but I got lucky on the first try. The result wasn't pretty — I'll need to buy a pizza paddle to get the pie onto the tile without making a mess of the pizza or my oven — but it tasted better than I expected it would.

Just to be sure my success wasn't distorted by how hungry I got waiting nearly three hours for the dough to relax, I tried another batch the next day. When my partner ate an entire pizza by herself and had to rest for half an hour before she could move again, I took her temporary suffering as a compliment.

Unglazed quarry and saltillo tiles are available at most large home-improvement stores. If you have concerns about whether or not a tile is glazed, ask the manager of the flooring department for a Material Safety Data Sheet on the product. If you're still not sure, splurge on a pizza stone.


This recipe is adapted from a recipe found on www.fanaticcook.blogspot.com



PIZZA

Makes one 15-inch pizza (about 8 servings)

Dough

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon instant yeast (if using active yeast, double amount)

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup water

1 teaspoon white or brown sugar

2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Topping

1 cup tomato sauce

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 cup or more grated mozzarella, cheddar or provolone or any combination of these cheeses

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Dash salt (optional)

Dash pepper (optional)

Other equipment

Rolling pin

Parchment paper (don't use wax paper; it sticks to the bottom of the pizza)

Pizza paddle or peel

Pizza stone, quarry tile or saltillo tile



Stir flour, yeast and salt together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, oil and water. Keep stirring the liquid ingredients as you pour the blend into the flour. Mix briefly; dough should be wet.

Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let dough sit for 20 minutes.

Scoop dough onto a clean, dry surface and dust with flour. Turn dough over and again dust with flour. Fold dough and knead gently and briefly, dusting with flour when it gets too sticky to handle. Be careful, though: Adding lots of flour might make the dough easier to handle, but it also makes it heavier and chewier. Avoid overkneading as well.

Transfer dough to a bowl, cover with a towel and place in an area where the temperature is at least 72 degrees.

Let rise until doubled in size, about an hour. Then deflate dough gently using a spatula or spoon around the edges, cover again and let rise for another hour.

While the dough is in its second full hour of rising, place the baking stone or tile on the bottom shelf of your oven and preheat to 500 degrees.

Gently deflate wet, tacky dough and scoop it onto a piece of parchment paper at least 15 inches wide and 15 inches long. Lay a sheet or two of parchment paper over the dough and roll it into a 15-inch circle that's 1/8 inch thick. (You might need to alter the size of the round to fit your baking stone.) Allow the dough to rest under the parchment paper for 30 minutes while you assemble topping ingredients.

Slide a large pizza peel or paddle under the parchment paper on which the pizza is resting. Gently remove parchment paper from top and spoon tomato sauce over dough. Distribute grated cheeses over tomato sauce, then sprinkle oregano, salt, pepper and a blend of the oil and garlic over cheese.

Because you are using parchment paper, it's not necessary to flour the paddle. The pizza cooks directly on the parchment paper.

Slide pizza with parchment paper onto preheated oven stone. Reduce temperature to 480 degrees. Cook for 12 minutes or until cheese bubbles and begins to brown. Remove pizza and parchment with peel and place onto an inverted pizza pan or cutting board. Cut pizza with pizza wheel or knife.