Pizza
This is great fun, the dough can be made in advance and even frozen. Prep time is about an hour, though a lot of that is allowing the dough to rest/prove. Cooking time depends on the oven, how thin the base is and how much topping you add, but shouldn’t take more than 10mins. Ingredients for 2 pizzas. These can be really cheap to make, depending on your tastes and where you shop!
The base
200g flour - you can get pizza flour or strong bread flour, though we made pretty decent pizzas using regular plain flour (by accident!)
125ml warm water
5 gram yeast
tsp salt
Optional: splash of milk, oil, semolina flour
Ideas for toppings
Passata (thick smooth tomato paste which you can make yourself) or buy a small carton or jar. Some are already flavoured with herbs or garlic etc.
Cheese - any cheese you like really, vegan or other, mozzarella is traditional
Onion (we like red), mushrooms (any ones you like)
Olives, pitted, we go for simple green or black, kalamata might work well too
Capers, peppers, jackfruit or your meat/alternative
Fresh (from the garden) or dried herbs and spices, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, chilli, black pepper.
Olive oil, sea salt,
Method
Sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, add the yeast to the warm water and mix together (a splash of milk and oil optional at this stage). Bring together with a fork or you hands until a dough consistency. Rather a slightly wetter than a drier dough as you can always add more flour later. Kneed on a floured surface for a few minutes into a nice pliable, soft, springy dough. Place in a bowl and cover with cling film (or a more sustainable material:) for about 10 mins. remove and cut into 2 pieces, shape into flattish circular shapes and re-cover separately. Allow to prove until roughly doubled in size, which might take about 45mins depending on how warm it is. You can always slow prove in the fridge or leave out for a few hours.
Once you are ready to cook, turn the oven on full. It will need to be at its maximum before you put the pizza in. If you have a pizza stone, it should be in the oven, we turned a large baking tray upside down, or you could put them on foil on the oven shelf.
Flour the surface where you will roll out the dough. you can use the strong flour or semolina flour here. Roll the dough out, it doesn’t really matter what shape it ends up, as long as it will fit in the oven and on the cooking base. You can throw it in the air and spin it if you fancy it, mind you don’t want to drop it or catch it with your fingers and tear it!
Before adding the toppings, you need to think about how you will get the ‘built’ pizza from your surface into the oven, as you won’t be able to just pick it up. If you don’t have a pizza shovel and a massive pizza oven, you’ll have to be inventive. We decided to put the base on some grease proof paper and slid a large firm place mat under the paper to lift it off and then slide the pizza (still on the paper) into the oven, onto the back of the baking tray. You may use foil and slide the whole thing onto the oven shelf. They do say the dough will crisp up better if it hits a super hot surface directly.
So, add the passata, and then your toppings. Avoid anything too wet or heavy if you base is super thin. Transfer to the oven. Wait until you get cheese melting and or the crust browning or bubbling.
Remove from the oven, add any additional toppings like fresh basil, a handful of rocket, extra virgin olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper. Eat immediately and then make the next one!
