I've got about as good a home pizza game as one can have without a modded or specialty oven, and can confirm, cast iron pan pizza is the perfect place for a newbie to start. The transfer from peel to cook surface is the most likely thing to go catastrophically wrong for someone starting out—pan pizza eliminates that step. No special equipment needed whatsoever—no peel, no stone, don't even need farina or coarse cornmeal on-hand. You can just cut it with a chef's knife or a cleaver (those are better than those stupid round-blade spinning cutters, anyway, and they're not that much worse than the long rocking-blade variety). About the only way to ruin it beyond fixing is to forget about it in the oven. It's an almost fool-proof dish, and great for building confidence that you can make good pizza at home.
I just make the pizza on parchment paper on the counter, and then pick up the whole thing and transfer it, with the paper, to the pizza stone in the oven
This is an OK alternative to my peel-method posted below, but it can be tough not to let the toppings pile toward the center, since it tends to bow downward in the middle. I've done it before, it works alright.
I eventually settled on this too. My oven is a standard oven, not super hot, so we get enough heat through the paper from the stone before the top is done. But I do think a semi-deep cast iron pan pizza is ideal and foolproof for the home cook.
If cooking on entirely flat surface, the parchment paper method described in other comments works well, though it's precarious with larger or heavier pies, need two people to avoid having the parchment paper spill out. If cooking in a cast iron pan, I just preheat the pan in the oven, and have all the ingredients set aside and dough prepared, and when the oven is ready, pull out the pan, put pan on stove top, lightly oil, and put dough in pan, and then put toppings on it fast and insert in oven. This works for the dough recipe I use, YMMV.
Eventually develop a whole methodology around launching pizza. Use a smooth floured wooden paddle. Know how much sauce a certain dough can hold before sticking. Avoid ingredients in sizes that tend to fall off. Test motion before putting in the oven, and if its sticking know that you can reflour under it piece by piece but attempting to launch a even slightly sticking pizza will always end in disaster.
I ended up getting 2 peels. Wooden to launch, steel to remove. Also use semolina or cornmeal on the peel and as soon as the dough hits the peel the clock starts so move fast. Always have the toppings ready to go before that point.
More transfer medium than you think you should need. Experiment with the amount.
If you don't know what I mean, I'm talking about coarse-ground cornmeal or farina, the latter of which is a very coarse-ground wheat flour sometimes used to make a kind of cereal-mush kinda like oatmeal or cream-of-wheat—but it's also outstanding for this job; coarse durham-wheat can do in a pinch, but it's too fine to really be good at it, plus it tends to be expensive while farina's usually cheap (and so's cornmeal, but avoid the fine stuff, you want the coarsest you can get).
You put this on the peel before placing the stretched dough on it and adding toppings. Just spread it in a layer over the top of it. It helps keep it from sticking, which makes the transfer easier.
I've found different peels require different amounts. I had a shitty looking peel that was somewhat-rough, unfinished wood and it didn't require much. It got ruined (I'll spare you the details, but, kids) and I replaced it with a cheap but fancier-looking one I found on amazon, that's dark-stained, smooth acacia or some shit. It's awful. I need so much more medium on it to keep the pizza from sticking. I've thought about roughing it up with sandpaper, see if that helps, but haven't tried it yet—if yours is smooth-finished and you want to be a pioneer, maybe try that. First pie I tried to cook with that thing was the first I'd ruined in years. Still mad about it :-)
You probably don't need so much that you can't see any of the peel under it, though, even on one that bad. My better peel only required a light dusting, once I got my technique down.
Point is, definitely use that stuff, and experiment with the amount of that you put on. The more you have to use, the more waste and the more mess, so there's good reason to dial in what you actually need and not just pile a ton on every time, but you need some amount.
As far as technique: shake it loose over the sink (so any cornmeal or flour that falls off goes there instead of the floor or whatever) right before transferring to the oven. Just hold it level and shake horizontally, forward and back or side to side, until the whole pie's loose and moves freely. If you have spots that stick really badly, uh, try to lift it up and put more medium under it? This has never worked well for me, I've just gotten good at making sure that doesn't happen, but sometimes you can save it that way.
Then, when transferring into the oven, you need to hold it at an angle shallow enough that gravity alone will not do the work—too steep an angle, and it'll pile up when it comes off. You'll need the same sort of shaking action here, but because it's tilted a little it'll also slide off as it goes. Start with the edge of the peel way at the back of your stone, maybe just an inch or so from the back edge of it, and move it forward as the pie comes off, else your placement will suck and, in the worst case, some of it won't be on the stone.
For your specific question: For one pizza for one, I start with the dough prepared as in the posts. The dough is in a covered plastic container, about 12 ounces to leave room in cases of the dough expanding. I dump the dough on a round sheet of Teflon. The sheet just nicely fits in the bottom of a common cast iron frying pan. I got the sheet from a long roll of such Teflon from Amazon, sold for drying fruit or some such. But it's Teflon so will withstand the heat of cooking -- it should and in my experience of some years, does.
So, now the round sheet of Teflon is on my cutting board and the pizza dough has been dumped onto the Teflon. Then with fingers, I press the dough to be round and nearly covering the Teflon. As in my posts, then I add tomato sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and slices of pepperoni sausage. Right, I have found no need for electric mixers, rolling pins, cooking spray, etc. Fingers work fine.
Now for your question, how to move to the frying pan!!! I slide a spatula under the right part of the Teflon, and that serves to support about half of the sheet and the raw pizza. So, with a right hand finger on part of the Teflon to keep it on the spatula and two left hand fingers to support the left side of the Teflon, I carry the stack to the stove and the frying pan. So far, I've never dropped anything! But it would be a little safer to have the frying pan, so far just at room temperature, also on the cutting board so that the trip of the Teflon circle to the pan would be really short.
WOW! Right! Just thought of something MUCH better! Have the room temperature frying pan on the cutting board or even just the countertop, put the Teflon sheet in the frying pan, and THEN add the toppings, dough, sauce, cheese, sausage, etc. Sooo, no moving to the frying pan at all!!!! 100% no worries, no risk!!!
When the pizza is done, I slide the spatula under the Teflon and carry it and the pizza to the cutting board. At this point, the pizza crust is a little stiff and easier to carry without flopping. And, again, so far I've never had any trouble from this trip from the pan back to the cutting board and the action with a chef's knife. Since I'm no candidate for a champion of high coordination, I'm sure you can do this move just fine!
Else, put some heat resistant pad on the cutting board and move the whole frying pan to that pad and, thus, have a very short distance to move the cooked pizza to the cutting board and knife action!!!
A "heat resistant pad"? How about just a pot, about 2 quarts, cool?
Important note: when home-cooking pizza, you can easily fake the peel with a large cutting board (wooden! Plastic may melt!) only for the taking-out portion. It may require a little more manual assistance, but it does the job. It's a much worse idea for putting the pie in, though (you can probably make it work, but... I wouldn't risk it)
This is handy if you don't want to own more than one peel, but do want to be able to prep a second pizza on a peel while the first one is cooking.
