As a result of my mom being awesome, I received King Arthur pizza dough flavor, pizza seasoning and perfect pizza flour blend for my birthday. As a result of me being a huge nerd, this was basically the best birthday present ever. Except for my pink and purple Huffy bike (1985). But this was definitely up there for this millennium.
First, let me say that you should all really be buying your flour exclusively from North Dakota Mill in Grand Forks, N.D., the largest flour mill in the U.S. and the only state-owned milling facility. We all know good bread/pizza crust starts with good flour, right? Right. And we all know good everything starts with North Dakota, right? Right. However, if you really must buy your flour from outside America's heartland, King Arthur (based in Vermont) is a good choice and their website is helpful if you run into trubs with almost any kind of baking experiment.
King Arthur Perfect Pizza Flour Blend
According to the package, this is basically a mix of all purpose flour and durum flour with some baking soda. Or is it baking powder? No, soda. I did a very unscientific experiment which kind of didn't really make sense since the King Arthur blend has additional leavening agents in it by making the recipe on the back of the package with Perfect Pizza Blend flour and Arrowhead Mills unbleached all purpose flour. Let's just say if making pizza dough were a jousting tournament, King Arthur totally knocked the other guy off the horse and then had his horse step on the other guy's face. Compared to many other pizza doughs I've tried, the dough was very easy to work with, did not tear or roll back and was easy to toss and shape. The outcome was also impressive, resulting in a crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside middle thickness American-style crust. If you are not that into screwing around with a bunch of different flours and types of crust and other complicated baking things, this flour is for you. If you are into that sort of thing, I would still keep some of this around on stand-by for those days when you accidentally make dough that has the consistency of lumpy, half-dried out (you know when it gets crusty edges?) Play Doh.
King Arthur Pizza Dough Flavor
Anything that makes something else taste more like garlic and/or cheese is a no brainer. I whole-heartedly endorse this product.
King Arthur Pizza Seasoning
There are a million pizza seasonings out there, but I like this one because it smells fresh and is less heavy on the oregano flavor. This is good to keep on hand to season the Frisco Madness no-work pizza sauce recipe described here (i.e., if you just use smushed canned tomatoes as pizza sauce). I would caution, however, that there is some salt in it, and if you're not sure how salty your canned tomatoes are, you should taste them before seasoning to make sure you're not turning your pizza into a salt lick. This is likely only a problem for you if you live in Hong Kong and can't buy San Marzano tomatoes, which you all know you should be using on your pizza if you can get them, correct?
King Arthur pizza-related baking products: buy them!
