Evolve, pizza pan!

GROWING up with neither Neapolitan grandmother nor local pizzeria (lived in Iowa, ate haggis), I learned how to make my own pizza out of pure desperation, often, and with giddy pleasure. Maybe this giddiness is why I've broken all four pizza stones I've owned. So when I saw a beautiful persimmon cast-iron pizza pan in a store recently, it was both its sturdiness and its color that caught my eye. So what if it was Mario Batali's persimmon: I once bought a pair of Emeril clogs too. I couldn't wait to get it home and start throwing dough.

My new pan's charms were immediate: The clarion tones it made when I dropped it while getting my groceries through the door was a huge improvement on the sound of broken pottery. And for making pizza, it blew my old pizza stones out of the water -- well, oven.

The pan made glorious pizza, with gorgeously burnished outer crusts and a bottom crust that remained perfectly crisp under the bubbling toppings. The pizza and its attendant pan moved easily from counter to oven and back again, thanks to its handles, easy-to-grasp enamel-coated half-moons. The pan retained heat and thus kept the pizza warm; it was also pretty enough to bring to the table.

And it made other unpromised things too: sandwiches, fajitas, pancakes, crepes. As with a pizza stone, you preheat the Batali pan in the oven before laying the uncooked pizza on it. But the Batali pan is a lot easier to use than a stone: It's smaller, and therefore it fits better in my oven. It's much easier to transfer fragile laden pies across the expanse from counter to waiting open oven. And unlike a stone, you can actually remove a hot Batali pan from the oven, thanks to the handles.

But best of all, that crust really rocks.

The cast-iron pan cooks just as evenly as a pizza stone, and it beats the stone in speed. But the pan produces a crisper, darker crust than a stone, one that's slightly flatter than one made on a stone, with less lift at the edge of the crust. (Not surprisingly, while it makes fantastic pizza crusts, it doesn't work for baking bread because it cooks too quickly and burns.)

You can use your pizza pan to precook toppings. Toast the walnuts for arugula goat cheese pizza, or roast the radicchio for a sausage, radicchio and burrata pizza. Since the pan's already hot, it's simple and faster; you also don't have to use (or wash) any additional kitchen gear.