Pizza Night

As I said in the previous post, last night was pizza night. The whole family loved it. Actually this was the second outing for our pizza oven.

The cool thing about making pizza yourself is that you can play with all the toppings you can possibly think of. Apparently there are even pizzas with chocolate topping. I have yet to try this, but the point is that you are only confined by your imagination. Sure, there will be some purists who will tell you that there are things you just can do, but in doubt just don't tell them.

The one thing you can't do without is the base - and for that you need a dough. Pizza dough is quite simple, but to get the measurements right I keep going back to a book. The one I use is "The Complete Book of Bread & Bread Machines". The recipe is actually for a bread machine. As I don't have one of these (and don't want one neither) I have to adjust the method. I actually base this a little on my sourdough experience. So this is what I do:

The evening before I take one tablespoon of milk (15ml) and two tablespoons of warm water (30ml), one teaspoon of granulated sugar and one tablespoon of wholemeal bread flour. Actually anything apart from self-raising flour will do, but I think that wholemeal adds extra flavor. Last not least you need yeast. I simply use the Tesco's Fast Action Died Yeast, which comes in 7g sachets. I mix one of those with all the other ingredients in a jug, cover with clingfilm and leave that overnight. In sourdough terms that is called the starter.

The next morning I dissolve 1 teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of granulated sugar in 100ml warm water and mix that with 225g of 00 grade pasta flour, one tablespoon of good olive oil and the starter. You can also use white bread flour, but I like the fine pasta flour better. You can leave the starter stage out and simply mix 225g of the flour, 140ml of warm water, the sugar, salt and olive oil in one go, but the extra maturing adds flavor. The dough then needs kneading until it is a smooth one and you can stretch it well. This kneading releases the gluten which you will need to create a thin base without it  ripping.

I then let this raise for two to three hours until it has at least doubled in size. The recipe is supposed to be for two pizzas (or pizze to be correct), but I prefer them really thin, so I then cut it into four pieces. knead them again and then let them double in size again.

Well, there are pizzas without tomato sauce, but I like mine with. It is a rather simple thing to do as well. I sweat one finely chopped onion in a little olive oil and then add two cans of chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste. I like to also add a little Worchester Sauce, but be careful if you want to make a vegetarian pizza as this contains anchovies. I then let this reduce until it is a thick paste and let it cool.

I love this wood fired oven, but before we had it, we just used our normal domestic oven at 220C and that worked fine.

However, a wood fired oven gets a lot hotter and that means that a pizza is is done in about one to two minutes which is quite cool (pardon the pun).

Whatever oven you use, once it is up to temperature, roll out the dough and put your fillings on. I start with the tomato sauce and thinly sliced red onions.

Next I add lots of fresh basil. This is very strong taste, but for me it is quintessentially Italian. Leave it off if you don't like it.

On this one we then added ham, black olives and thinly sliced mozzarella cheese. 

So, after it's been in the oven, this is the final result:

Well, I hope you liked this little post and perhaps play a little with pizza toppings yourself. Either way, please let me know what your think and if you do try this then let me know how you get on.