"There's a pizza place near where I live that sells only slices. In the back, you can see a guy tossing a triangle in the air.” -- Steven Wright

The pizza-making got off to a surprisingly good start on tuesday. After a 4-hour journey into the suburban strip mall jungle, I returned to civility with a large block of granite that I plopped into the oven and began heating not long after I made sure it wouldn't break the oven rack.

The dough this time around comprised King Arthur bread flour, tap water, Fleischmann's fresh yeast, and table salt. Using bread flour made the dough much easier to work with as it has a higher gluten content, which keeps it from tearing. I also lucked out when mixing it all up and ended up with a dough that wasn't too wet or too dry. It was as close to perfect as I've made yet. While the end resultant was a crust that was perhaps a bit too thick for the diameter of the pizza, it was both crisp and chewy. No charring though. Still, I was baking these pizzas in 10 minutes rather than 20, which was probably largely due to the thicker and more dense baking stone holding its heat as well as an oven door that actually closed.

The finished product:

Check out the hole structure:

Sadly, no charring: