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Kwik Pizza

This article follows the general instructions contained in our more extensive pizza series, except we've substituted frozen Rhodes White Dinner Rolls (dough) for the made-from-scratch dough. We use these little gems almost everywhere. Here, you can have your pizza on the table in half an hour...provided you take a few doughballs out of the freezer a few hours before meal time, let them defrost, and rise a bit. Here's nearly everything you'll need to make pizza: a variety of peppers - chili, jalapeno, poblano, and bell; a sprig of rosemary or any appropriate fresh spice you can find; garlic, onion, roma tomatoes, basil, olive oil, flour, salt, pepper; mozzarella and feta cheese; and dough balls ready to roll. You'll need as many of the heavy duty cast iron skillets as your oven will hold at one time.

Set your oven to 500º and pop in the pans to get hot. If your oven is not set this hot or hotter, the dough will not cook through and crisp up. Start chopping everything you'll need. Once the pans are ready, you'll need to move, move, move to build your pizzas and get them in and out of the oven. Cooking time is 10 minutes or less. Set everything up within easy reach and in the proper order. What you don't want to do is grab the hot pan with your bare hand by mistake in your assembling frenzy. It's easy to do.

Roll out all the dough you'll need. You'll start with a punched down ball of dough less than a few inches in diameter, which you'll roll out into a very thin, roughly round disc approx. 12" in diameter...or what will fill up the skillet.

When the pans are hot, take one out and pour in and slosh enough olive oil to liberally coat the bottom of the pan.

Set in the dough and, if the pan is hot enough, it should sizzle with profound pleasure.

Tile on the cheese, and don't worry about complete coverage. Use grated cheese to provide more even distribution and increased cheese thickness. Throw on the tomatoes and what-have-you...

After heaping on all the vegetables, squeeze on fresh garlic, sprinkle salt, grind pepper, and splash with olive oil. We use chili peppers to give the pie a pleasant heat without a harsh bite. Even people who don't like spicy food will like the taste of this pizza (provided you throw away the chili peppers before bringing it to the table).

When done, the edges will be brown and the pizza will slide readily around the pan...and off onto a plate.

Charlie, there's your pie.