Ahhh pizza…

Proper delicious homemade pizzas are completely achievable at home.

They are, for the most part, pretty simple. A white dough topped with a touch of mozzarella, tomato sauce for freshness and your carefully considered toppings of choice.

But it’s those finer details that really make it sing and they come with practice, after all, the pizza is a craft evolved over years and years of repetition. Processes and practicalities from professional pizzaiolos but we don’t have to be a professional to make something amazing no, no, no…

So long as we follow the Pizza Principles we can make something EXCEPTIONAL that fits into out schedules at home.

Here’s a recipe. Not the recipe. Have fun with it, use it as a foundation, apply the pizza principles and tweak, adapt and evolve your very own perfect pizza recipe.

Pizza

Notes

This recipe will make 5 Pizzas bases. If you need more, double, triple the recipe to whatever you need.

For baking you do really need a baking stone and some sort of peel or flat tray to slide your pizza off of, PLUS some parchment paper is really handy here too.

Difficulty: Easy to make, tricky to shape.

My Kitchen Temperature: 21°C/70°F

Start to finish: Day 1: 2.5-3.5 hours Day 2: 1 hour

Ingredients

For the dough

325g Room temperature water

4g Fresh yeast or 2g dry yeast

500g Strong white bread flour

8g Salt

For the Sauce and topping

1 Jar of Passata or tin of tomatoes

Salt

Dried Oregano

1 tbsp Olive oil

Optional Sugar

Mozarella

Method

Day 1

Making the Dough

In a large mixing bowl weigh your yeast, add the water and mix together until the yeast is dissolved.

Next add the flour and salt.

Mix everything with your dough scraper for about one minute until it comes together into a dough with no obviously wet parts or dry flour. and then turn it out onto a clean table. Then, shape it into a ball and place it back into the bowl. Cover and leave to rest for 1-1.5 hours

Fold

Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a surface dusted very lightly with flour, and fold it up into a smooth ball. Return it to the bowl, cover once again, and rest for a further 1-1.5 hours

Dividing and Balling

Dust the table and top of your dough lightly and use your dough scraper to turn it out onto the table.

Divide it into five pieces, around 165g each. Shape each piece into a tight ball and line up on a tray. Dust the dough balls and cover loosely with cling film or another upturned tray and rest in the fridge overnight.

Preparing your toppings

Pour your passata into a bowl and season with salt to taste. Some tomatoes are quite acidic so you may need a little sugar just to take the edge off. Then stir in the olive oil and oregano and set aside.

If you are using wet mozzarella like me, drain off the water, tear into pieces and place on a plate lined with kitchen paper. Cover with another sheet of paper and leave in the fridge to dry slightly.

Day 2

Stretching out your pizza dough

When you are ready to make your pizzas, preheat your oven to 230°C fan/gas mark 9 and dust a dough ball well with semolina. Using your thumbs, press down the dough all round the edge just inside where you imagine the crust to be. Then, with your fingers, push down the dome in the middle to make it flat. Pass the dough from and to hand stretching it out evenly into a circle. You might find it easier to hold the pizza base by the edge just inside the crust, working your way around letting the weight of the dough hanging down do the stretching for you. Or spin it in the air, catching it on your knuckles in between!

Once you are happy with the size and shape, place the stretched out dough onto a piece of parchment paper.

Topping your pizza

Place two tablespoons of sauce in the centre. With the back of the spoon spread it round in a circle working your way out to the inside edge of the crust. Top with a few pieces of mozzarella and season with a little salt and pepper. And a drizzle of olive oil.

Baking your Pizza

I recommend baking your pizza on a hot stone at 230°C fan/446F/gas mark 9, because that’s as high as my oven goes. Traditionally pizza ovens go WAY HOTTER so, if your oven goes higher and you’re confident it has an even heat throughout, crank it up! Just make sure that stone has a good 30-40 minutes to heat up properly.

Slide your dough with the paper onto a wooden peel or a flat baking tray. Slide it off of the peel onto the hot stone, paper and all. Depending on the temperature your oven is at, the pizza will take around 5-10 minutes to cook, browning on the top and crisping on the base. If you can, slide out the paper half way through baking, and if not, it’ll quite happily stay there until the end of baking.

Remove your pizza from the oven with your peel and slide it onto a wire rack. Remove the paper if you haven’t already.

I like to let my pizza rest up for 5 minutes or so on the wrack before cutting, just to keep the base nice and crisp. You won’t be able to eat it straight away without burning your mouth anyway!

Slice, fold, enjoy.