TWD -- Loved the sauce, disliked the crust

I was curious to try Eastern Mediterranean Pizza since I love to experiment with different crust recipes. Since this was a pita bread used as a crust, I wondered how I would like it. In short, I didn't. I like my pizza crusts to be snappier, to brown better (sugar helps here) and to be less chewy. My favorite crust is by Rose Levy Beranbaum from her book "The Bread Bible."

Dough after additional flour added

I made a half-crust recipe as suggested, but found I needed the maximum amount of flour, and then some. Even then, the dough was a bit wet.

Because of the sponge and the long rise, the dough was rather difficult to roll/stretch out. It kept bouncing back. Part of my problem could have been the fact that I used bread flour instead of the all-purpose flour as suggested. I was out of AP flour and didn't want to run to the store to get more. Therefore, the bread flour, I'm sure, made for a chewier crust.

That said, I loved the topping. We grow our own Roma tomatoes, and it was nice to find a recipe that has one use the tomatoes as is, without breaking them down in a long-simmering sauce. The combination of lamb, tomatoes, shallots, garlic, cinnamon and allspice was wonderful. I wouldn't have changed a thing. Incidentally, I used twice the amount of sauce called for in the recipe. I could tell by reading the ingredient list that this would be a bit skimpy for eight individual pizzas.

Mediterranean pizza after baking

If I do this again, I would use Rose's recipe for a crust and double the sauce ingredients as described above.