ohmohm
26-12-2011, 12:33
ตอนนี้ผมล่ะบ้าไปแล้ว วันนี้ว่างงานจัดไม่ค่อยมีงานเข้าครับ อยู่ดีดีก็อยากกิน PIZZA ก็เลยหาในเว็บฝรั่งเป็นวิธีการทำอาหารภาษาอังกฤษ ดูแล้วฝรั่งเค้าช่างเขียนวิธีการทำอาหารภาษาอังกฤษได้ยากแท้แท้ เริ่มต้นจากวิธีการหาของจนถึงวิธีการตัดเลยทีเดียวว่าเค้าตัด PIZZA กันอย่างไร เห็นแล้วอยากทำเว็บทำอาหารหมือนกันนะครับ55555
http://board.roigoo.com/members/ohmohm-albums-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%84-picture1190-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3-pizza.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/members/ohmohm-albums-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%84-picture1190-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3-pizza.html)
http://www.divorcednotbroken.com/http://www.divorcednotbroken.com/images/how_to_make_pizza.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/tags/%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3-pizza.html)
The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza
A Guide for the Pizza Amateur http://billyreisinger.com/images/pizza_small.jpg
There are a few "secrets of the trade" in making your own pizza; once you know them, it is not hard to make your own and it takes very little time. In fact, after you make it a few times you'll wonder why I made such a big deal out of it.
Disclaimer: The instructions below are for making a pizza in the traditional American pizzeria style.
The things you should know first
<ins style="display:inline-table;border:none;height:250px;margin:0;padding:0;position:relative;visibility:visible;width:300px"><ins id="aswift_1_anchor" style="display:block;border:none;height:250px;margin:0;padding:0;position:relative;visibility:visible;width:300px"></ins></ins>
You will need a large, flat surface that you can get messy, and you will need a large (large!) bowl. Also, you will make a mess the first few times you do this.
Pizza stones are overrated. Use a Pizza Screen. Why?
The holes in the screen allow the bottom surface of the dough to cook by convection and radiation (as opposed to conduction with a pizza stone). Translation: crispier crust.
The screen speeds up cooking, because you don't have to heat up a stone first.
A screen won't shatter if dropped on the floor or heated improperly, like a pizza stone.
You'll find that, unlike your pizza stone, nothing sticks to the screen (as long as you don't have any big holes in your dough).
You can put toppings on the dough while it is on a screen, which is hard to do on a pre-heated pizza stone.
So, unless you have a brick oven, throw out your pizza stone and buy an 18" pizza screen. Food Service Direct is selling them for about $6.00. [Note: in a pinch, I've taken those disposable aluminum baking sheets you get from the grocery store and punched a serious amount of holes in them - this still yields better results than a pizza stone, in my opinion.]
The advice about pizza screens above applies to hand-tossed pizza crusts, and that's what the dough recipe below is for. Those of you looking for a deep-dish pizza recipe will have to wait for the next Ridiculously Thorough guide.
With those need-to-know items clear, it is time to move on to...
The time-condensed pizza-making plan overview
Optimized for the non-experienced pizza maker, this guide will help you cook the best pizza in the littlest amount of time.
Know your ingredients
Make the dough
Prepare toppings while dough rises
Shape dough into pizza
Top it and cook it
Cut it and eat it!
Know your ingredients
http://billyreisinger.com/images/pizzas/tomato_portabella.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/tags/%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3-pizza.html) Hothouse tomato, portabella mushroom, mozzarella, and garlic butter pizza
I have compiled a list of common pizza ingredients below for your convenience - but don't limit yourself to these. Most importantly, have the ingredients to your pizza already planned out before you begin to make it.
The cheese
If you will be covering your pizza with a layer of cheese, use a cheese or blend of cheeses with low moisture. While cheddar is absolutely delicious, it burns easily at high temperatures, and is not appropriate for a pizza unless you blend it with something else. Some good pizza cheeses, in order of blander to more flavorful:
Mozzarella
Provolone
Asagio
Fontina
Parmesan
Romano
Chevre (Goat Cheese)
Feta
Gorgonzola, Bleu (in moderation!)
The best avenue is to blend some of the above cheeses together. Caution: parmesan, romano, chevre, and feta are all quite salty, and gorgonzola and bleu are not for the weak.
You could also try to use no cheese! Seriously, some of the best pizzas I've ever eaten had no cheese on them - try a pizza with apricot sauce, artichokes, and mushrooms (ala Trader Joe's). Or, you could try a pizza with garlic butter, thinly-sliced new potatoes, pancetta (or bacon), and capers. Yum!
Use flavorful cheese as if it were a spice. Flavorful cheeses - such as gorgonzola, Bleu cheese, goat cheese, feta, and brie - work well on pizza in sparse quantities.
The sauce
Marinara (of course)
Melted butter with parsley
Melted butter with garlic, rosemary, and basil
Pesto
Olive paste
I'm getting hungry!
The toppings
Fresh Vegetables
Bell peppers (all colors, especially red)
Onions, red or white
Roasted eggplant
Cooked asparagus
Cooked broccoli or cauliflower
Spinach leaves
Sliced mushrooms (go with portabellas!)
Zucchini & yellow squash
Tubers
New potatoes (those litte red potatoes)
Yucca root
Yams (i.e. "tropical yams")
Sweet Potatoes
Nam? (purple potato)
Fruits
Thinly-sliced tomatoes
Pineapple chunks
Apricot chunks
Mango chunks
Fresh halved rasperries
Canned / pickled stuff
Black and green olives
Kalamata olives
Artichoke hearts (quartered or halved)
Capers
Canned corn
Pickled sliced jalapenos
Baby corn
Meat
Cured / salted meats
Pepperoni
Salami
Prosciutto
Bacon / Pancetta
Ham / Canadian Bacon
Italian sausage
Fresh terrestrial meats
Ground beef
Pulled chicken
Shredded pork (loin)
Steak strips
Sliced roasted beef
Fresh seafood
Jumbo shrimp
White fish (such as tilapia or cod)
Oysters
The fun part is coming up with a sauce, cheese, and topping combination that you and yours will enjoy!
Make the dough
See How to Make Pizza Dough, which has detailed instructions on how to make the pizza dough. This step will take between 15 to 30 minutes.
Prepare toppings while the dough rises
http://billyreisinger.com/images/pizzas/5-8-11_250.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/tags/%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3-pizza.html) Roasted garlic, zucchini, and parsley butter on wheat crust
At this point, you should use the rising / chilling time to slice, dice, and pre-cook any ingredients that you may be putting on the pizza. It is important that you pre-cook any meats that would not be safe to eat raw before you put them on a pizza. These meats include (but are not limited to) beef, sausage, chicken, and pork. This is also a good time to cook any tough vegetables, such as asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, or eggplant. Basically, get everything ready to go so that when you have the crust shaped out, you can just slap it on and throw it in the oven.
Shape dough into pizza
This is the part that requires the most practice. The process can be broken down into a few steps, though they are not quite linear, unforutnately. Still, you should try them in the order below, and go to a previous or later step if required.
The basic goal here is to form the dough into a flat circle (or square) that is about the same size as your cooking vessel (screen or [choke] stone, whatever).
Dust your working surface with a thin layer of flour or corn meal (corn meal is best). You may need to dust again if your dough sticks to the surface in the following steps.
Grab a chilled dough ball and smash it out evenly with your palms (I use one on top of another, with my body weight behind them) to make the ball about twice the diameter it was.
Pick up the dough and hold it between the palm and fingers of your preferred hand, letting the rest of the dough dangle and stretch down. Now smash the edge of the dough with that hand while you gently pull the dough counter-clockwise with the other. Rotate the dough clockwise and repeat. One step of this process should take you about a second.
Once you have rotated the entire ball in your hands twice or three times, the ball should look like a small flying saucer - flat on the edges, and a little more spherical towards the middle. Place the dough on your surface and smash it down with your palms (one on top of the other) until you have a more uniform shape.
At this point, you need to stretch out the dough evenly into a larger size. You may need to add more flour or corn meal to your surface, because it is important that the dough moves without any friction. Place your palms a few inches apart on the top half of the dough about halfway between the center and the edge. Start rotating the dough on your surface, pulling with your palms in opposite directions. Make sure you pull gently; however, if you pull a hole in the dough, don't panic - just grab one side of the tear and pull it on top of the other, then smash it to "glue" the pieces together. After you make one pull, rotate the dough clockwise about 1/8 turn and repeat. Make sure that you don't concentrate on one area too much - stretch both the middle and edge out evenly; however, only work on the top half of the dough.
You can continue to shape the dough into the right size through the method immediately above, or you can be adventurous and try to toss the dough. Tossing the dough is a quick way to stretch out the dough, using the inertial force of the spinning dough (sometimes referred to as centrifugal force) to stretch itself while it spins above you. Tossing is a bit tricky, though, and can end in disaster in two ways:
Huge hole forms in the dough because you spin it too hard or you puncture it when catching it (not so bad)
You don't catch the dough, and it lands somewhere gross, like the floor (BAD)
Needless to say, tossing takes practice. This is not to say that you won't pick it up on the first try - some people just have a knack for this. I've attempted to describe how I do it below. Please remember, though, that the basic idea is to spin the dough up in the air, and that you may find a better way to do it yourself.
Hold the dough with the tips of the fingers of your left hand and the palm and fingertips of your right hand (or vice-versa if left-handed), in such a way that most of the dough spills over between you and your hands.
You will spin the dough counter-clockwise if you are right handed; clockwise if you are left-handed. Before you toss, reverse spin about 1/4 turn - then gently but quickly spin the dough and toss it up in the air simultaneously. Catch the dough with as much "hand real estate" as possible - I go to the length of using my forearm - to avoid puncturing it.
Repeat as necessary until the dough has stretched to the desired diameter.
Top it and cook it
Before you top your pizza, make sure that you have placed the dough on top of the screen or [cough] pizza stone. You'll never get it on if you put toppings on first! Even if you have preheated your stone, you should take it out of the oven and put the dough on top before you top it. [Note: if you happen to have one of those huge pizza paddles, you can top the dough on your countertop and then slide it on the stone afterwards - just make sure you have plenty of cornmeal underneath the crust first. Be careful about throwing toppings into your oven, though.]
Now is a great time to preheat the oven - I usually crank it up to the highest temperature before "broil", which on my oven is 500F. I've found that it takes about 20 minutes for the oven to preheat to that temperature.
This step is, by far, the one most rife with pizza pitfalls. We are cooking fast, and we are cooking at a high temperature - this means that there are two things to worry about: uneven cooking and burning.
Avoid uneven cooking
Spread your toppings evenly over the surface of the pizza, avoiding any "mountains." Avoid piling up toppings in the center - pizza rookies tend to make this mistake, with disasterously undercooked results! Don't be afraid to push the toppings as close to the edge of the crust as possible.
As mentioned before, pre-cook any ingredients that may not be cooked thoroughly in 10 or so minutes of 500F heat. This includes, but is not limited to, raw sausage, chicken, thick cuts of certain vegetables (such as eggplant), and beef. Some people also prefer to pre-cook onions that have been cut in thick chunks.
Every 3 to 4 minutes, check on your pizza. If one side of the edge of the crust is browning, and another is not, this is a sure sign of uneven heat in your oven. Twist the dough 1/4 turn and do so every 2-3 minutes until your pizza is cooked. Those (lucky few) of you with a convection oven will not have to worry about this.
Don't put too many toppings on your pizza. If the height of your pizza reaches more than an inch or so, you've probably got too much stuff on it, and the toppings buried way down on the bottom (not to mention the cheese) may not heat up.
Avoid burning
There are certain ingredients that must be underneath cheese or other ingredients if you don't like them black and crispy:
Spinach (GROSS when burned!)
Fresh basil leaves (also gross if burned)
Ham, Canadian bacon, prosciutto
Pepperoni, salami (though some like them burned or crispy)
Minced or chopped garlic
Use a cheese or blend of cheeses with low moisture. Avoid cheeses with a low melting point (such as cheddar, American, and Monterrey Jack) and absolutely do not touch your pizza with Velveeta. Mozzarella and provolone are always good on pizza.
After you add your toppings, slide the pizza into your oven, and enjoy the wonderful smell that will emanate from your kitchen.
When your pizza appears to be done (for me, this usually means that the cheese on top has browned and the crust is nearly burned), take it out of the oven, screen and all, and place it somewhere safe, like a stove burner, to cool down. Let it cool down at least a few minutes before you cut it. All in all, a pizza should cook in about 10 minutes. Again, use your judgement and taste to decide when it is done; however, if it takes considerably longer than 10 minutes, you probably need to turn up the temperature on the oven.
Cut it and eat it!
Some people prefer to use a pizza-cutter (one of those circular blades with a handle) to cut pizza; I find that one can rarely put the right amount of force behind the blade of a pizza-cutter. I prefer to use a large chef knife (as in an 10" knife) to cut my pizzas at home. In restaurants, I have seen all kinds of great gadgets to cut pizza - the best is the pizza rocker knife. It might be a little over-the-top if you are not an avid pizza maker, but let me tell you - if you ever have to cut more than 3 pizzas at once, you'll thank me for this baby. Even if you cut just one, you'll understand the value of this clever knife.
If you do plan to use a pizza-cutter, you should try to use the "lift and cut" method. In other words, don't just drag the cutter over the pizza - you'll end up taking all of the toppings with it off the edge of the pizza! You should firmly push the cutter down on the crust, move it back and forth about an inch, and repeat until you have cut the entire pizza.
After cutting the pizza, you can sprinkle some Parmesan or Romano cheese and a little chopped parsely on top. Finally, enjoy your beautiful and tasty pizza!
http://board.roigoo.com/members/ohmohm-albums-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%84-picture1190-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3-pizza.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/members/ohmohm-albums-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%84-picture1190-%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3-pizza.html)
http://www.divorcednotbroken.com/http://www.divorcednotbroken.com/images/how_to_make_pizza.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/tags/%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3-pizza.html)
The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza
A Guide for the Pizza Amateur http://billyreisinger.com/images/pizza_small.jpg
There are a few "secrets of the trade" in making your own pizza; once you know them, it is not hard to make your own and it takes very little time. In fact, after you make it a few times you'll wonder why I made such a big deal out of it.
Disclaimer: The instructions below are for making a pizza in the traditional American pizzeria style.
The things you should know first
<ins style="display:inline-table;border:none;height:250px;margin:0;padding:0;position:relative;visibility:visible;width:300px"><ins id="aswift_1_anchor" style="display:block;border:none;height:250px;margin:0;padding:0;position:relative;visibility:visible;width:300px"></ins></ins>
You will need a large, flat surface that you can get messy, and you will need a large (large!) bowl. Also, you will make a mess the first few times you do this.
Pizza stones are overrated. Use a Pizza Screen. Why?
The holes in the screen allow the bottom surface of the dough to cook by convection and radiation (as opposed to conduction with a pizza stone). Translation: crispier crust.
The screen speeds up cooking, because you don't have to heat up a stone first.
A screen won't shatter if dropped on the floor or heated improperly, like a pizza stone.
You'll find that, unlike your pizza stone, nothing sticks to the screen (as long as you don't have any big holes in your dough).
You can put toppings on the dough while it is on a screen, which is hard to do on a pre-heated pizza stone.
So, unless you have a brick oven, throw out your pizza stone and buy an 18" pizza screen. Food Service Direct is selling them for about $6.00. [Note: in a pinch, I've taken those disposable aluminum baking sheets you get from the grocery store and punched a serious amount of holes in them - this still yields better results than a pizza stone, in my opinion.]
The advice about pizza screens above applies to hand-tossed pizza crusts, and that's what the dough recipe below is for. Those of you looking for a deep-dish pizza recipe will have to wait for the next Ridiculously Thorough guide.
With those need-to-know items clear, it is time to move on to...
The time-condensed pizza-making plan overview
Optimized for the non-experienced pizza maker, this guide will help you cook the best pizza in the littlest amount of time.
Know your ingredients
Make the dough
Prepare toppings while dough rises
Shape dough into pizza
Top it and cook it
Cut it and eat it!
Know your ingredients
http://billyreisinger.com/images/pizzas/tomato_portabella.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/tags/%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3-pizza.html) Hothouse tomato, portabella mushroom, mozzarella, and garlic butter pizza
I have compiled a list of common pizza ingredients below for your convenience - but don't limit yourself to these. Most importantly, have the ingredients to your pizza already planned out before you begin to make it.
The cheese
If you will be covering your pizza with a layer of cheese, use a cheese or blend of cheeses with low moisture. While cheddar is absolutely delicious, it burns easily at high temperatures, and is not appropriate for a pizza unless you blend it with something else. Some good pizza cheeses, in order of blander to more flavorful:
Mozzarella
Provolone
Asagio
Fontina
Parmesan
Romano
Chevre (Goat Cheese)
Feta
Gorgonzola, Bleu (in moderation!)
The best avenue is to blend some of the above cheeses together. Caution: parmesan, romano, chevre, and feta are all quite salty, and gorgonzola and bleu are not for the weak.
You could also try to use no cheese! Seriously, some of the best pizzas I've ever eaten had no cheese on them - try a pizza with apricot sauce, artichokes, and mushrooms (ala Trader Joe's). Or, you could try a pizza with garlic butter, thinly-sliced new potatoes, pancetta (or bacon), and capers. Yum!
Use flavorful cheese as if it were a spice. Flavorful cheeses - such as gorgonzola, Bleu cheese, goat cheese, feta, and brie - work well on pizza in sparse quantities.
The sauce
Marinara (of course)
Melted butter with parsley
Melted butter with garlic, rosemary, and basil
Pesto
Olive paste
I'm getting hungry!
The toppings
Fresh Vegetables
Bell peppers (all colors, especially red)
Onions, red or white
Roasted eggplant
Cooked asparagus
Cooked broccoli or cauliflower
Spinach leaves
Sliced mushrooms (go with portabellas!)
Zucchini & yellow squash
Tubers
New potatoes (those litte red potatoes)
Yucca root
Yams (i.e. "tropical yams")
Sweet Potatoes
Nam? (purple potato)
Fruits
Thinly-sliced tomatoes
Pineapple chunks
Apricot chunks
Mango chunks
Fresh halved rasperries
Canned / pickled stuff
Black and green olives
Kalamata olives
Artichoke hearts (quartered or halved)
Capers
Canned corn
Pickled sliced jalapenos
Baby corn
Meat
Cured / salted meats
Pepperoni
Salami
Prosciutto
Bacon / Pancetta
Ham / Canadian Bacon
Italian sausage
Fresh terrestrial meats
Ground beef
Pulled chicken
Shredded pork (loin)
Steak strips
Sliced roasted beef
Fresh seafood
Jumbo shrimp
White fish (such as tilapia or cod)
Oysters
The fun part is coming up with a sauce, cheese, and topping combination that you and yours will enjoy!
Make the dough
See How to Make Pizza Dough, which has detailed instructions on how to make the pizza dough. This step will take between 15 to 30 minutes.
Prepare toppings while the dough rises
http://billyreisinger.com/images/pizzas/5-8-11_250.jpg (http://board.roigoo.com/tags/%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3-pizza.html) Roasted garlic, zucchini, and parsley butter on wheat crust
At this point, you should use the rising / chilling time to slice, dice, and pre-cook any ingredients that you may be putting on the pizza. It is important that you pre-cook any meats that would not be safe to eat raw before you put them on a pizza. These meats include (but are not limited to) beef, sausage, chicken, and pork. This is also a good time to cook any tough vegetables, such as asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, or eggplant. Basically, get everything ready to go so that when you have the crust shaped out, you can just slap it on and throw it in the oven.
Shape dough into pizza
This is the part that requires the most practice. The process can be broken down into a few steps, though they are not quite linear, unforutnately. Still, you should try them in the order below, and go to a previous or later step if required.
The basic goal here is to form the dough into a flat circle (or square) that is about the same size as your cooking vessel (screen or [choke] stone, whatever).
Dust your working surface with a thin layer of flour or corn meal (corn meal is best). You may need to dust again if your dough sticks to the surface in the following steps.
Grab a chilled dough ball and smash it out evenly with your palms (I use one on top of another, with my body weight behind them) to make the ball about twice the diameter it was.
Pick up the dough and hold it between the palm and fingers of your preferred hand, letting the rest of the dough dangle and stretch down. Now smash the edge of the dough with that hand while you gently pull the dough counter-clockwise with the other. Rotate the dough clockwise and repeat. One step of this process should take you about a second.
Once you have rotated the entire ball in your hands twice or three times, the ball should look like a small flying saucer - flat on the edges, and a little more spherical towards the middle. Place the dough on your surface and smash it down with your palms (one on top of the other) until you have a more uniform shape.
At this point, you need to stretch out the dough evenly into a larger size. You may need to add more flour or corn meal to your surface, because it is important that the dough moves without any friction. Place your palms a few inches apart on the top half of the dough about halfway between the center and the edge. Start rotating the dough on your surface, pulling with your palms in opposite directions. Make sure you pull gently; however, if you pull a hole in the dough, don't panic - just grab one side of the tear and pull it on top of the other, then smash it to "glue" the pieces together. After you make one pull, rotate the dough clockwise about 1/8 turn and repeat. Make sure that you don't concentrate on one area too much - stretch both the middle and edge out evenly; however, only work on the top half of the dough.
You can continue to shape the dough into the right size through the method immediately above, or you can be adventurous and try to toss the dough. Tossing the dough is a quick way to stretch out the dough, using the inertial force of the spinning dough (sometimes referred to as centrifugal force) to stretch itself while it spins above you. Tossing is a bit tricky, though, and can end in disaster in two ways:
Huge hole forms in the dough because you spin it too hard or you puncture it when catching it (not so bad)
You don't catch the dough, and it lands somewhere gross, like the floor (BAD)
Needless to say, tossing takes practice. This is not to say that you won't pick it up on the first try - some people just have a knack for this. I've attempted to describe how I do it below. Please remember, though, that the basic idea is to spin the dough up in the air, and that you may find a better way to do it yourself.
Hold the dough with the tips of the fingers of your left hand and the palm and fingertips of your right hand (or vice-versa if left-handed), in such a way that most of the dough spills over between you and your hands.
You will spin the dough counter-clockwise if you are right handed; clockwise if you are left-handed. Before you toss, reverse spin about 1/4 turn - then gently but quickly spin the dough and toss it up in the air simultaneously. Catch the dough with as much "hand real estate" as possible - I go to the length of using my forearm - to avoid puncturing it.
Repeat as necessary until the dough has stretched to the desired diameter.
Top it and cook it
Before you top your pizza, make sure that you have placed the dough on top of the screen or [cough] pizza stone. You'll never get it on if you put toppings on first! Even if you have preheated your stone, you should take it out of the oven and put the dough on top before you top it. [Note: if you happen to have one of those huge pizza paddles, you can top the dough on your countertop and then slide it on the stone afterwards - just make sure you have plenty of cornmeal underneath the crust first. Be careful about throwing toppings into your oven, though.]
Now is a great time to preheat the oven - I usually crank it up to the highest temperature before "broil", which on my oven is 500F. I've found that it takes about 20 minutes for the oven to preheat to that temperature.
This step is, by far, the one most rife with pizza pitfalls. We are cooking fast, and we are cooking at a high temperature - this means that there are two things to worry about: uneven cooking and burning.
Avoid uneven cooking
Spread your toppings evenly over the surface of the pizza, avoiding any "mountains." Avoid piling up toppings in the center - pizza rookies tend to make this mistake, with disasterously undercooked results! Don't be afraid to push the toppings as close to the edge of the crust as possible.
As mentioned before, pre-cook any ingredients that may not be cooked thoroughly in 10 or so minutes of 500F heat. This includes, but is not limited to, raw sausage, chicken, thick cuts of certain vegetables (such as eggplant), and beef. Some people also prefer to pre-cook onions that have been cut in thick chunks.
Every 3 to 4 minutes, check on your pizza. If one side of the edge of the crust is browning, and another is not, this is a sure sign of uneven heat in your oven. Twist the dough 1/4 turn and do so every 2-3 minutes until your pizza is cooked. Those (lucky few) of you with a convection oven will not have to worry about this.
Don't put too many toppings on your pizza. If the height of your pizza reaches more than an inch or so, you've probably got too much stuff on it, and the toppings buried way down on the bottom (not to mention the cheese) may not heat up.
Avoid burning
There are certain ingredients that must be underneath cheese or other ingredients if you don't like them black and crispy:
Spinach (GROSS when burned!)
Fresh basil leaves (also gross if burned)
Ham, Canadian bacon, prosciutto
Pepperoni, salami (though some like them burned or crispy)
Minced or chopped garlic
Use a cheese or blend of cheeses with low moisture. Avoid cheeses with a low melting point (such as cheddar, American, and Monterrey Jack) and absolutely do not touch your pizza with Velveeta. Mozzarella and provolone are always good on pizza.
After you add your toppings, slide the pizza into your oven, and enjoy the wonderful smell that will emanate from your kitchen.
When your pizza appears to be done (for me, this usually means that the cheese on top has browned and the crust is nearly burned), take it out of the oven, screen and all, and place it somewhere safe, like a stove burner, to cool down. Let it cool down at least a few minutes before you cut it. All in all, a pizza should cook in about 10 minutes. Again, use your judgement and taste to decide when it is done; however, if it takes considerably longer than 10 minutes, you probably need to turn up the temperature on the oven.
Cut it and eat it!
Some people prefer to use a pizza-cutter (one of those circular blades with a handle) to cut pizza; I find that one can rarely put the right amount of force behind the blade of a pizza-cutter. I prefer to use a large chef knife (as in an 10" knife) to cut my pizzas at home. In restaurants, I have seen all kinds of great gadgets to cut pizza - the best is the pizza rocker knife. It might be a little over-the-top if you are not an avid pizza maker, but let me tell you - if you ever have to cut more than 3 pizzas at once, you'll thank me for this baby. Even if you cut just one, you'll understand the value of this clever knife.
If you do plan to use a pizza-cutter, you should try to use the "lift and cut" method. In other words, don't just drag the cutter over the pizza - you'll end up taking all of the toppings with it off the edge of the pizza! You should firmly push the cutter down on the crust, move it back and forth about an inch, and repeat until you have cut the entire pizza.
After cutting the pizza, you can sprinkle some Parmesan or Romano cheese and a little chopped parsely on top. Finally, enjoy your beautiful and tasty pizza!