Here now, the No-Knead, Tomato Madness Skillet Pizza Recipe. If you don't love it, at least it was quick.

You know you need the tomatoes upon pizza. You can feel it. You’ve been reading about it for a month.
 
During this spontaneous time of unofficial tomato celebration, what if you’re lusting for the Fresh Tomato Pie—but you don’t make pizza yet?
 
Or you do, but you don’t have the time to make pizza?
 
Or you are utterly uninterested in making a really good, artisan-style dough that ferments for 72 hours because you just want that pizza right now?
 
Welcome to Free The Pizza. Hear me now and believe me later: You may rue the day you arrived here.
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You are about to experience the frightening reality of No-Knead, Make-It-Now, Killer Tomato pizza.

Literally, I am going to show you how to make a Fresh Tomato Pie on a dough that you can make and use immediately.

​ABOVE: The skillet version of the pizza under discussion. It was good. The crust is so very thin. The bottom is so very crispy. The tomatoes are so very tomatoey. 


This pizza is made with a dough I never would have recommended before, and is topped with entirely too much tomato--and it is good.

It is a crispy, thin-crust tomato-laden delight. 
 
No pizza oven. No special tools beyond a pan.
 
A lot of people will line up to tell you this pizza dough is nonsense.
 
It kind of is. I’m good with that.
 
That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve made about two-dozen of these pizzas since last week’s episode of Tomato Madness.
 
 
My wife, The Fabulous Honey Parker, does not suffer foolish pizza.
 
She has strict standards and won’t enjoy the food-chemistry thrills of, say, a Totino’s Party Pizza. (I will enjoy that. I have no shame. It’s a fond pizza memory that comes alive every couple of years and then returns to hibernation.)
 
Honey has enjoyed slices from every single one of these heresy pizzas because they just are great fun.
 
Here at Free The Pizza, someone occasionally asks what we are freeing the pizza from. This pizza is a perfect example.
 
We are freeing pizza from the tyranny of pizza judgments and bad attitudes; the condescension of pizza snobbery; the idea that your personal pizza must be something that meets with the approval of others; that complicated biochemical machinations required to create a worthy dough that spins your head off in the neurotransmitter flash of a dopamine supernova.
 
 
I developed this pizza as a quick-bread tribute to the time-honored Southern Tomato Pie.
 
Whether you have no skills or just no patience, and you wish to celebrate the glory of the tomato pie pizza this season, this is a lightning-strike method for making it so.
 
You may recall that Southern Tomato Pie is an excellent non-pizza that is suspected of having Italian-influenced heritage.
 
Since quick breads—we’re talkin’ biscuits, corn bread, hush puppies, corn pone, fruit breads and fritters, just to name a few—are staples of the American South, I wondered: Why can’t there be a quick-bread pizza?

ABOVE: Tomatoes marinating in all their glory. 


This is that pizza, and I’m not going to kid anyone: The star here is the tomatoes.
 
I’ve had a few emails about the marinated tomato topping, and its healing powers worthy of Merlin.
 
Guys have told me they would eat these marvelous marinated tomatoes on all manner of otherwise cringe-worthy comestibles.
 
I can take no real credit for that marinade. It’s just olive oil, salt, garlic and basil. It’s a time-honored blend whose mystical properties long predate my blip of existence upon this orb.
 
I do credit the world-famous Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven for popularizing their Fresh Tomato Pie and sending me on this head-spinning journey of tomato mania.
 
Credit also goes to whoever invented the Southern Tomato Pie, which sings its own siren song and is what originally inspired Tomato Quest 2026.
 
 
Our supermarket produce sections here in Mississippi and Louisiana are now hip-deep in Creole tomatoes.
 
It’s a joyous seasonal hazard.
 
Presumably, something similar happens wherever you are. Maybe it even starts in your own garden.
 
Bottom line: This is a pizza of homage.
 
Thankfully, Spain’s naked profiteering via the Columbia Exchange and Italy's culinary willingness to beat the tomato into its cuisine and then immigrate to North America has led us to this twisted place.
 
That was a process of a couple hundred years, which makes a 72-hour cold ferment seem like a fleeting moment.
 
 
And here in the internet age, this pizza dough will take you less time to make than to bake the resulting pizza.
 
This pizza requires a 1- to 2-hour passive waiting time for the marinated tomatoes.
 
There’s a baking time of 12 to 16 minutes, depending on your oven and your pan.
 
The marinated tomatoes take about 5 minutes of active prep, the dough takes about 5 minutes of active prep, and the pizza takes about 5 minutes of active prep.
 
There’s no special equipment or oven. I do use Lloyd Pans pizza pans, which are arguably specialized. But you can use cake pans. You can use Walmart pizza pans. You can use cast iron skillets.
 
Best of all, this is almost idiot-proof. No special skills are required.
 
 
Do I have an agenda here? Is there some ulterior motive?
 
Sure!
 
I want you to make a pizza that’s so good, you’re astonished that it was possible.
 
And maybe you’ll decide to make more traditional pizzas and buy one of my books.
 
But that’s hardly the profit motivation you might imagine. Making a million bucks requires selling an impossible quantity of $10 books (as low as 99 cents on Kindle for a limited time). So clearly, profit is not the point.
 
 
I just want people to be able to make great pizza.
 
I don’t want them to be hornswoggled by oven salesmen or browbeaten by pizza know-it-alls.
 
Pizza should not be weaponized.
 
I just want y’all to share the joy.
 
With that, I present to you the Southern Quick-Bread Pizza That Nobody Saw Coming, the Pizza-In-A-Minute Killer Tomato Pie.
 
Enjoy!

IF YOU'D LIKE TO DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE PDF OF THE FOLLOWING RECIPE, CLICK HERE

ABOVE: The finished Tomato Pie as made in a cast-iron pan. This one was kept in a little longer, which accounts for the very crispy edge. My wife liked this one best of all. She said, "This one has a little jazz hands." I can't disagree.


RECIPE OVERVIEW
 
This is a pan pizza. The dough is made from self-rising flour, Greek yogurt and salt. I did not invent this dough. Nobody’s sure who invented it. It became popular with the Weight Watchers crowd in the last decade. But this version of that recipe departs from the original with added yogurt.
 
The resulting crust is less stiff and more tender, with a crispier bottom and edge.
 
The process requires the following steps:
 
One to two hours before baking: Marinate the tomatoes.
 
Half an hour before baking: Preheat the oven
 
10 minutes before baking: Make the dough and assemble the pizza.
 
Yield: One 12-inch, thin-crust pan pizza. (I recommend making two. Your diners will become insatiable.) Alternately, this recipe can be used to make two 8-inch pizzas, which is helpful if you're baking in standard cake pans. 

ABOVE: Tomatoes marinating in container. This is a small batch for an 8-inch test pizza. What I try to do for each batch of tomatoes, regardless of size, is marinate them in a container with a wide, flat bottom. Wider distribution of the tomatoes means a more uniform distribution of the marinade.


Marinated Tomatoes
 
Ingredients
 
2 medium tomatoes (almost baseball sized), cut into one-inch chunks,
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 tsp dried basil
A half-dozen leaves fresh basil, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced  
 
Equipment: a bowl or other container with a wide, flat bottom
 
Using a sharp chef’s knife (or a serrated blade), slice off the woody stems and the blossom ends (bottoms) from the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes into one-inch chunks.
 
Using a spoon or your hand, combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust salt to taste as necessary. (If you’d be willing to sit down and eat it all right now with a spoon, the salt is probably sufficient.) Allow to marinate for 1 to 2 hours.
 
NOTE: I often make more than I need for the pizza to make sure I have “enough.” (That’s code for leftovers I can eat with a spoon.)
 
 
30 MINUTES BEFORE MAKING DOUGH, PREHEAT THE OVEN
 
Definitely do this before making the dough. You want the oven ready to go as soon as you’ve finished assembling the pizza. This takes full advantage of the leavening qualities of the baking powder once it’s activated.
 
Position one oven rack at the lowest position in the oven.
 
Position the other oven rack just below the middle position.
 
Turn the oven on to bake at 500 degrees.

ABOVE: Dough ball in a cast-iron skillet. This is a test batch that proved the secret to this pizza is a wet, sticky dough. That dough ball is very dry and manageable, which does not make the best pizza in this particular equation.  


​Quick-Pizza Heresy Dough

NOTE: There are no weights specified here because a) newbies are often scale-resistant, and b) not all yogurts measure equally. If you wish to weigh your ingredients, refer to the data on the product labels for the flour and yogurt. It's very simple. (It's also how I do it.) 
 
Ingredients
 
1 cup self-rising flour (preferably White Lily)
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp Greek yogurt, divided
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tbsp refined olive oil for the pan
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil for brushing the dough
 
Equipment: 12-inch pizza pan or a cast-iron skillet with a 12-inch bottom, or two 8-inch pizza pans or cake pans. 
 
Mix the self-rising flour together with the salt using a whisk.

Next, incorporate the yogurt using a metal spoon. Once they’re mixed together, remove excess yogurt and flour stuck to the spoon and knead it into the dough, forming a consistent ball.
 
You should now have an easy-to-handle ball of dough. Add enough additional yogurt to make the dough sticky and a little shaggy. With my particular flour, yogurt and climate, I’ve found that one additional tablespoon is sufficient. It goes from being easy to handle like a good biscuit dough to wet, sticky, a little shaggy and kind of annoying.
 
Using a brush or your fingers, oil the pan with the refined olive oil.
 
Press the dough ball into the center of the pan and flatten it into a round.
 
Pour the extra virgin olive oil on top of the dough. Spread it with a brush or your fingers. Using your fingertips, begin dimpling the dough. Your goal is to spread it evenly throughout the pan, all the way to the edge. It will make a very thin, even layer of dough. You may find yourself pressing through the dough to the bottom of the pan. Just gently push the holes back together.
 
It will require a little finesse, but you will eventually be able to spread the dough evenly all the way around. It is a feat and you will be a master in short order.

ABOVE: Dough panned in a Lloyd Pans 12-inch pizza pan. 

ABOVE: Same-size dough ball panned in a cast-iron skillet. The dough doesn't quite fill the skillet to the edge, as the diameter is a half-inch larger than the 12-inch pizza pan. But this is the dough that yielded the crispy edge in the finished pizza at the top of the recipe. 


​Topping The Pizza
 
Ingredients
 
7 standard slices of, low-moisture part-skim mozzarella (typically about 4 inches square)
350g marinated tomato (about 2 medium tomatoes the size of a baseball)
extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling
20g pecorino Romano, shredded

​Position 3 slices of cheese across the diamater of the pizza.
 
Position 2 more slices perpendicular to the first row of cheese so there is now a cross.
 
With the last 2 slices, cut each of them in half diagonally. Position each of the four triangles at the four open corners in the cheese cross layout.

​ABOVE: Marinated tomatoes on top of the cheese.

 
Using a slotted spoon or your hands, distribute the tomatoes evenly around the top of the pizza.
 
It’s OK to use a little extra tomato. This is one of the few times I will recommend crowding a pizza with toppings. It’s also OK to get some of the marinade on the cheese. I sometimes sprinkle a little extra around the pizza.
 
Slide the pizza pan onto the lowest rack in the oven.
 
Set a timer for 8 minutes.
 
When the timer goes off, remove the pizza from the oven. Use an offset spatula or a butter knife to lift the pizza and peek at the bottom. It should be turning golden brown. If so, return it to the oven with a 180-degree rotation.
 
If the bottom is dark brown and approaching doneness, move the pan to the upper rack.
 
Re-set the timer for 4 minutes.
 
At the end of the 4-minute timer, the pizza should be getting crunchy brown on the bottom. The top should have a little bit of color.
 
If it needs more time in the oven, that’s fine. You want to get the fully brown crunchy goodness of a golden brown bottom. The edge should be turning golden brown as well.
 
Bake it until it looks really good.

ABOVE: The pizza fresh from the oven. While it's still hot, I like to drizzle the olive oil and spread the Pecorino Romano cheese.
 
 
IF USING A CAST-IRON SKILLET: This will extend the baking time. Depending on the skillet, I’ve found that it requires an additional 2 to 4 minutes baking time, and the skillet can remain on the bottom rack the entire time. But this will all depend on your oven and your pan. Check the bottom of the pizza and use your own judgement.
 
When done to an inviting color, remove the pizza from the oven.
 
Using the offset spatula or similar tool (a flat silicone spatula works), coax the pizza out of the pan and onto a cooling rack. You may have to loosen some clingy cheese crunchies around the edge of the pan.
 
Drizzle the top of the pizza with olive oil. (I recommend using a small squeeze bottle for even, controlled drizzling.)
 
Sprinkle the pizza with the shredded Romano.
 
Once the pizza is set, slice and serve and enjoy with reckless abandon.

ADDITIONAL NOTES  
 
Make substitutions at your own peril.
 
I’ve made this recipe using conventional flours and baking powder. It doesn’t work as well as self-rising flour. Most important: It doesn’t taste as good.
 
Make sure your flour is fresh. A year-old bag of White Lily worked, but not as well (and not with as much flavor) as a brand-new bag of White Lily.
 
Bread flour does not work well here. There are various technical reasons for that. But the bottom line is that all the reasons it works for traditional pizza dough do not help us in the realm of this dough. It lacks both the desirable structure and the desirable flavor.
 
I’ve made versions of this pizza where I added the olive oil drizzle and Romano cheese before the bake. Adding it after the bake tastes better.

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