Smash Burger Pizza

Directions

1. Make the special sauce first. Combine mayonnaise, ketchup, yellow mustard, diced pickles, pickle brine, garlic powder, and smoked paprika. Mix until fully combined. Give it a taste test. It should be tangy, slightly sweet, and unmistakably burger sauce. Refrigerate until needed. It keeps for a week (and is better the next day).

2. Cook the ground beef on your Elite Griddle at high heat. Add oil to the surface and add the beef in small rough pieces, no need to form them into patties. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder as it goes on. Break it apart into irregular crumbled pieces as it cooks. You want uneven texture, some pieces with more crust, some with less, rather than one uniform mince. Cook until deeply browned and slightly crispy at the edges, approximately 5–6 minutes. Remove and set aside. Drain excess fat if there is significant pooling.

3. Fire up your Versa 16 Pizza Oven and bring the stone to 700°F. Slightly lower than a standard Neapolitan bake, the cheese and sauce content of this pizza benefits from a slightly longer bake at a marginally lower temperature. Allow 10 minutes for the stone to reach full temperature.

4. Flour your work surface. Press the dough ball outward from the center leaving a 1-inch border. Stretch gently to approximately 10–12 inches. Lay onto a lightly floured peel.

5. Spread the special sauce across the surface in a generous even layer leaving the border clear. This is the base and the sauce is one of the defining flavors of this pizza.

6. Scatter torn mozzarella across the sauce. Distribute the cooked ground beef evenly across the cheese. Tear the American cheese slices into rough pieces and scatter across the beef. American cheese melts differently from mozzarella and the combination of both is what produces the cheeseburger quality this pizza is aiming for. Scatter finely diced white onion across the top.

7. Slide onto the rotating stone. Close the door. Bake for maximum 5 minutes at 700°F. The American cheese will melt completely and begin to bubble. The mozzarella will develop golden patches. The crust will blister and spot. The beef pieces will crisp slightly further against the heat.

8. Remove with the peel. Immediately add the dill pickle slices across the surface… cold pickles on a hot pizza is the contrast that makes this work. Drizzle a thin line of yellow mustard across the top. Add a small pile of shredded iceberg lettuce directly in the center, it wilts slightly from the heat and provides crunch and freshness against the richness underneath. Finish with a pinch of flaky salt. Cut and serve immediately.