Ken Forkish's Hawaiian Pizza

Directions

1. If you use a dough recipe (see note below) that calls for refrigeration, remove your dough ball from the refrigerator about 60 to 90 minutes before baking pizza. Put your pizza steel or stone (or, if you don’t have either, an upside-down rimmed baking sheet) on an upper rack in your oven no more than 8 inches below the broiler. Preheat the oven to 550°F (290°C) for 45 minutes.
2. While the oven is heating, prep and roast the pineapple and onion. Peel the pineapple with a sharp knife, then cut the fruit away from its core. Cut the fruit into 1/2-inch squares. Slice the onion vertically into 1/2-inch-wide wedges, then cut into 1/2-inch lengths. In a large, heavy cast-iron pan, toss the pineapple (note: don't crowd the pan with pineapple or you won't get much browning—we wouldn't use more than about 4 cups in a 12-inch skillet) and onion in the olive oil with a sprinkling of fine sea salt and chile flakes to taste. Roast at 550°F (290°C) until tender and nicely caramelized, about 10 minutes, depending on the size of your pineapple and pan. Reserve 3 1/2 ounces (100g) of the roasted pineapple and onion mixture for topping the pizza. Snack on the rest or save for future pizzas.
3. Set up your pizza assembly station. Give yourself about 2 feet of width on the countertop. Moderately flour the work surface. Position your wooden peel (or, if you don’t have one, another upside-down rimmed baking sheet) next to the floured area and lightly dust it with flour. Have the bacon fat, tomato sauce, pecorino, ham, roasted pineapple and onion, and mozzarella at hand, and a ladle or spoon for the sauce. Switch the oven to broil 10 minutes before loading the pizza.
4. To shape the pizza, put the dough ball on the floured work surface and flip to coat both sides moderately with flour. For Neapolitan style (puffier crust), shape the dough with your hands and leave a puffy edge, as shown in the video above; for New York style (thin crust), roll out with a rolling pin. Transfer the disk of pizza dough to the peel. Run your hands around the perimeter to relax it and work out the kinks.
5. Dab bacon fat evenly around the dough, then spread the dough with the tomato sauce, smoothed with the back of the ladle or spoon. Add the toppings in this order: pecorino, ham, roasted pineapple and onion, and mozzarella.
6. Turn off the broiler, then gently slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. Close the oven door and change the oven setting to bake at 550°F (290°C). Bake for 5 minutes, then take a quick look at the pizza to judge its progress. Turn on the broiler again, and finish the pizza until the cheese is completely melted and the crust is golden with spots of brown and a few small spots of char, about 2 minutes. Use tongs or a fork to slide the pizza from the pizza stone onto a large plate. Serve.
7. Note: Use your favorite pizza dough recipe here—we love Jim Lahey’s No-Knead recipe on Food52, or Ken Forkish has 13 different dough recipes in his cookbook The Elements of Pizza (linked in the headnote), including the same-day Saturday Pizza Dough, which we used in the photos and video: https://recipes.oregonlive.com/recipes/saturday-pizza-dough