A Crust of a Different Color...

This is a much shorter post, I promise! (My husband, aka my blog beta tester, is getting a little cranky about being asked to read all of these long posts. Maybe I should pull out the "What have you done for me lately?" 'tude... Hear that, Bun? DOORKNOBS! As in, put them back on the friggin' doors, I don't care how tarnished they look.)

Last night I subjected some friends and family to my first attempt at making pizza - without using those tasty cornmeal crusts you can buy at the store.

It was pretty good, but I still have a bit to learn about pizza crust cooking times and thickness. I used a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (looooove this book!):

2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 TBS olive oil
2 tsp salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3 to 3 1/2 cups flour
Cornmeal to sprinkle on the pan

We did four pizzas- fresh mozz, smoked mozz, caramelized onion and sauteed mushroom; pesto with fresh mozz and asparagus (and no tomato sauce); fresh mozz with garlic-sauteed kale and pine nuts; and my daughter's creation of smoked mozz and caramelized onion.

To give you an idea (if you live near me) of the kind of crust I like, I think Rustica makes a perfect pizza crust. So I'd like to pose some questions to all of you fabulous chefs out there-

1.) What's your favorite pizza crust recipe?
2.) How do you get it to be just the right thickness for a crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside kind of crust?
3.) How do you really tell when it's done? The middle looked doughy but the sides were getting brown.
4.) How do you avoid a conflagration of smoking cornmeal bits on the sides of the pan/pizza stone? (Or do I just open all the doors to create a nice cross draft so that the smoke detectors don't get all crazy?)
5.) What's your favorite pizza topping combo?

Please, please, please share your secrets!