Someone I know posted a link to Facebook which had a video clip showing how to make a pizza on your stovetop in 20 minutes. I don’t normally watch clips like these but I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how this was possible — that is, how it was possible to make a good pizza in that time. I can easily imagine making a real piece of crap in that time.
So I watched. https://recipes.thechefstoolbox.net/component/yoorecipe/recipe/4-stove-top-pizza/83-vegetarian.html
Chef’s Toolbox is a company that sells cooking equipment, it turns out, and this recipe is basically a way for them to show off one of their pans.
The idea is, “YOU TOO can take these ingredients, MIX THEM IN THE PAN, and just COOK ON YOUR STOVETOP to produce a delicious pizza in 20 minutes with NO MUSS AND NO FUSS.”
You are to take the following ingredients:
- 1 cup(s) self-raising flour
- 1 cup(s) Plain flour
- 1 pinch(es) good pinch of Salt
- 1 teaspoon(s) rounded teaspoon of dried yeast
- 1 teaspoon(s) honey
- 1 cup(s) luke warm water
- 1 cup(s) pasta sauce of your choice
- 1 handful(s) bocconcini cheese
- 1 cup(s) Roasted capsicum – sliced
- 1 handful(s) basil leaves, torn
- 1 cup(s) Semi-dried tomatoes
to make your pizza. You take the flours, the honey, the yeast, the salt, and the water, and you stir them up to make your dough, which you pat nicely to cover the bottom of the sauté pan. Then you add your toppings. Then you turn on your stove burner and cook the pizza with the lid tightly placed on the lid for a few minutes; after a while you turn the lid so that steam can vent through these little spouts that appear if the lid is turned just so, and finish cooking the pizza.
Now, I haven’t made this thing, but I have a few questions. Why on earth would you want to use a whole teaspoon of yeast to make one pizza? I use less than that to make dough that rises and is enough to make four proper pizzas. My concerns are many and varied: 1. Wouldn’t the finished product taste utterly, disgustingly, yeast-y, if there’s that much yeast in there that hasn’t had time to develop at all? 2. Wouldn’t the sudden burst of heat just kill the yeast, leaving it worthless but still present to impart an unpleasant taste to the dough? 3. If you’re using self-rising flour, why do you need yeast in there anyhow? 4. Wouldn’t it be a better bet, if you’re insisting on making pizza this way, to use a baking powder/baking soda system instead of yeast? 5. What the hell is wrong with people, anyhow?
I’m not too interested in buying self-rising flour, but I am perfectly capable of making a batch of it myself (KAF’s directions: 1 cup King Arthur flour + 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder + ¼ teaspoon salt, whisked together) and one of these days I am going to take a sauté pan and have a bash at this recipe. I will bet our old pizza stone, which we never use, that this recipe results in crap.
This Old Hausfrau 
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