Reaching in to the Slice mailbag, we've got ...

[Photograph: pizzacrustyeast.com]

Adam,
Tmayson here, long time lurker and big fan. I saw Fleischmann's has a special blend just for pizza—it doesn't bounce back when you stretch it, you can make pizza in an hour, no rise needed, faster, cheaper, blah, blah, blah.

I tried it and made the dough, following the directions EXACTLY—it made two rounds, enough for a thin-crust 16-inch pizza on my cast iron pizza stone, and I used it right after mixing with just a little kneading.

The result? Very small cornicione, not a lot of rise, very good browning (I do 10 minutes in a 500°F oven, no oven hacks or anything).

On her blog, Cookistry, Donna Currie put a sourdough crust (left) to the test against Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast (right). [Photographs: Donna Currie/Cookistry]

I think you would get more flavor and spring with a little bit of a rise, but that would defeat their marketing purpose. Still, for a near-instant pizza crust (the package brags that you can have pizza in a half hour), it was not bad. The yeast was on sale, but I wouldn't pay more money for it unless I HAD to have instant homemade pizza.

The second half of the dough is in the fridge and I will let you know the what the difference was when I make that tomorrow. I suspect that some slow rise in the refrigerator will improve my results a bit. Will send in pics for My Pie Monday

Keep up the great Slice work,
tmayson

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Dear tmayson,

You may have seen the blog post that we linked to last week — Donna Currie, over on Cookistry, put the Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast up against a crust made from one of her sourdough starters.

Having recently made some pizza from regular active dry yeast (with a 45-minute rise and then stretch and bake) and then later in the day some with my own sourdough crust, there's such a world of difference in terms of flavor that I don't know if I could ever go back to same-day dough, let alone the PCY.

Though, yeah, sometimes you just want to make some pizza ASAP.

Send in your pics when you can. Would love to see this in a My Pie Monday!

Hasta la pizza,
Adam