Cast Iron

Yeah, they contributed some chonk to my body. But they were also delicious.

Mine is completely non stick at this point, just ran a spatula around the rim and the whole thing popped out.

My recommendation is to do 3 coats in an oven, before you start cooking. When cooking, your first initial meals should be fat heavy (think bacon, steak, maybe even a shallow fry like a schnitzel).

And, until the seasoning layer is strong, reseason on the stove top each time after cooking.

I personally recommend this video, which I think is the most insightful. My biggest mistake early on was seasoning with too much oil, which would leave a sticky residue behind.

You know your seasoning is there when you can fry an egg (in butter or oil) with no stickage.

Edit: Also, I should add that I've had this pan for around 5 years, so it's got some great layers built up. Nothing is better than just cooking with the pan for a long period of time.

I line my pans that are not fully nonstick with oil then sprinkle that with uncooked grits (rough ground cornmeal).

https://youtu.be/HukqEjCPkhU?feature=shared. This worked perfectly for me.

I’ve made a fair amount of pizza in my cast iron, and it took some trial and error to get the pizza to not stick.

Either preheat the pan fully before adding the oil or fat and (carefully) drop in the dough, or use a generous amount of butter and shape the dough in a cold pan.

When spreading toppings, cheese along the edge is fine, but try not to get much sauce on the sides of the pan. That will burn and eat away at the seasoning more.

My pan doesn’t have great seasoning, though - I mostly just use it for pizza every other week or so.

On top of all the good links below, I also give the pan a good shake just after taking it out of the oven. The pizza is easier to shaker loose when it's warm then when the cast iron cooled off. After it's loose I tend to just flip the pizza out onto a big cutting board. Depending on the type of pizza you might want to put a rack underneath while it l cools / sets.

It's great. One thing I did, that I recommend (I've made this same recipe around 3 times now) is using fresh compressed baker's yeast instead of instant. I just prefer it more, and that shit rises like crazy.

The conversion is 1 tsp of instant yeast = 8.5g of fresh compressed yeast.

I think it tastes and smells better, and it rises much faster. (really makes the 24 hour wait for the dough worth it, otherwise I sometimes go even a bit longer than 24 when I use instant yeast) (depends on your fridge temperature, of course - mine was at 4 degrees Celsius)