Heavenly Homemade Pizza

For the past week my youngest son has been bugging and begging me for pizza. He kept saying “Tio Carlos makes his own pizza all the time, so why can’t we Mommy?” So I thought, why not try and make one myself and post it on the blog?! :)

 

For the record, I have NEVER EVER made my own pizza, but I still decided to do as much as possible from scratch (I actually didn’t even know you could buy store bought pizza dough until after I had begun the baking!). The only thing I bought readymade was the pizza sauce, because I found it right next to the canned tomatoes in the supermarket... and since it was imported from Italy I convinced myself it was more “authentic”. Next time I promise to make the sauce from scratch.

 

So… I began by making the dough the night before in order to develop more flavour.

 

DOUGH INGREDIENTS:

-       600g (4 cups) all-purpose flour

-       2 teaspoons dry yeast

-       1.5 teaspoons salt

-       4 teaspoons white sugar

-       4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

-       330ml (1 1/3 cups) tap water (warmed up a bit in the microwave)

 

INSTRUCTIONS:

          DOUGH

1.     Place flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl and mix with a wooden spoon. 

2.     Add the olive oil and the water (I used my stand mixer, but you can of course mix it by hand). Mix it until the dough comes off the side of the bowl. Add ½ tablespoon of flour if needed. Should only take a few minutes.

3.     Take the dough out of the bowl and knead for 5 minutes until smooth and shape it into a ball.

 

RISE NR. 1

1.     Drizzle some olive oil in the bowl and place dough in, turn over and rub top with oil.

2.     Cover with cling wrap and put in a warm place for approximately 2 hours until it doubles in size.

3.     Put the bowl with the dough in the fridge over night for the flavour to develop. (Optional).

 

RISE NR. 2

1.     Scrape dough out of bowl and place on work surface lightly dusted with flour. Shape into a log (deflating the dough in the process).

2.     Cut into 3 equal portions and make into small, round bowls (tucking the sides under).

3.     Place balls with smooth side up on a large tray as far apart from each other as possible.

4.     Sprinkle a little flour on top and rub to coat surface. This way they won’t stick to the lightly damp towel placed to cover the balls.

5.     Leave in warm place for 3-4 hours until almost double in size (1 hour, if not fridge cold).

 

PIZZA BASE

1.     Pre-heat oven to 275°C or as high as possible (my oven only reaches 250°C). Put shelf in the middle.

2.     Sprinkle work surface with a bit of flour. Place dough on top.

3.     Without touching the edges, use finger tips and back of fingers to deflate dough gently and spread out into a 20cm diameter. Then use your fingers to stretch the dough, working around the circle, until it's almost the size of a 30cm pizza pan with holes (I didn’t have round pizza pans, so I improvised, using my rectangular trays with holes and made rectangular pizza shapes instead).

4.     Drag onto the pizza pan or tray. Finish stretching it to fill the pan or tray. Leave 1 cm of the edge untouched as much as possible for puffy edges.

TOPPING AND BAKING

1.     As per Pia’s suggestion, I pre-baked the flattened dough for 7 minutes as I don’t have a pizza stone or an extremely hot oven. Then took it out and added the toppings.

2.     Spread with ¼ cup pizza sauce, 1 1/3 cups of grated mozzarella and then additional toppings of choice. 

·      My younger son added bacon, mini-tomatoes cut in half, fresh basil, oregano and Heinz BBQ sauce (?!).

·      My older son added bacon, mini-tomatoes cut in half, fresh basil, oregano and pineapple (Sorry Chef Salvatore, but we really love pineapple on the pizza… haha!).

·      I added bacon, fresh basil, oregano, pineapple and fresh mushrooms.

3.     Then I put the pizzas back in the oven for another 7 minutes. Until the cheese melted and had some golden spots.

 

CONCLUSION: The pizzas turned out DELICIOUS and my boys (including hubby) now have a new favourite, homemade dish! And btw, the Heinz BBQ sauce is actually a great pizza topping... ;)

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