It’s time for some cuisine again. And since I love to do my own stuff, have no big budget, food shall be saturating, easy to prepare, and of course enjoyable, I present you my basic recipe for Pizza. I taught it to many people on my travels and Pizza is awesome! By Pizza I am referring to thin, crusty pizza, not to the American way of doing it, I will never be able to appreciate the thick dough which is still kind of raw inside.
It will cost you maybe $10 or EUR 8 for 3 pizzas, so a meal for 3 people, which is a steal. Of course it can become more expensive, when you use luxurious ingredients for the topping. The topping of a Pizza is the most expensive part.
The Pizza Dough
The dough it the reallyinexpensive part about a pizza and prepared right, very enjoyable! You need the following ingredients:
- Water, which should be warm at the time you put in the dry yeast
- Dry yeast for baking, half a package
- Half a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt
- Flour, regular type 405
- 3 spoons of olive oil
This basic recipe is the basis for every great pizza! What you put on there is totally up to you. First of all you take a glas of warm water, about 300 mL and put it into a big bowl. You add salt and sugar and assure everything is in solution. The sugar is necessary, that the yeast you add (half package) is activated properly. Wait 10 min if you have the time, since the yeast will start to foam and add the flour by that time and the oil immediately afterwards. For 300 mL of water you will probably need 500 g of flour. Best is to try it and work the flour in. The dough forms immediately and is ready, when it is not clammy anymore. Add flour as much as necessary to assure that and work in everything that is sticky to the side of the bowl. When you are done with that let it rest for 30 min to make sure, the yeast can start to work – you will see that due to increase of size of the doughball.
The Sugo
In the meanwhile you can prepare the sugo. I always take binned tomatoes in a piece and puree them, equally to the sauce of the Lasagna.
- Binned tomatoes, a small bin is sufficient for 3 Pizzas
- A small bin of concentrated tomato paste
- An onion and a garlic clove
- Olive oil
- Italian herbs, pepper, salt as much as you wish, but you don’t need much
You slice one little onion very fine and grate one clove of garlic. You heat both together in a deep pan with some olive oil, until the very fine slices of onion are starting to get brown. Then you add the self made puree of the tomatoes and a small bin of concentrated tomato paste, if you wish you can add about 100 mL water at this point which you use to rinse the empty bins completely into the sauce. In addition put some Italian herbs, salt and pepper and let this mixture cook on low heat for 5 min. Afterwards it is ready for use!
For some ingredients as topping, I suggest you to put mascarpone on the pizza as well. It is very nice, when you have mushrooms or strong tasting ingredients, like a good proscuitto, which is the dried ham, not the cooked one.
The Preparation & Topping
Once you have dough and sauce prepared you can actually start to prepare the pizza itself. You have to put some flour on a clean and dry table and put a handful orb of dough on the flour and press it into a flat form. Then you roll the dough into a round and thin form (about 2.5 – 5 mm thin), a tad bigger than a big plate. You transfer this processed dough on a metal or bolus pad you want to bake the pizza on – it becomes best if you bake it at maximum heat on a specific pizza pad. Roll in the frame a little bit, not much but like the frame is a tad thicker than the rest. Put the sauce all over the pizza but just a thin layer as well.
Now to the topping in general:
- Cheese is a topping that should not miss on any pizza – mozarella works best here, but for some variations I use additional gorgonzola or parmigiano reggiano
- Various ingredients given in the pictures
You put cheese, and here it’s best to take mozarella either grated or if you get it in your region, take the mozarella block and cut down very thin slices to obtain quadratic pieces which you can distribute all over the tomato sauce. I prefer to put the cheese under the toppings, since it builds a connective layer with the dough and the ingredients will not fall off afterwards – Don’t use too much cheese either!
Topping suggestions on top of the tomato sauce and mozarella:
- Gorgonzola, and freshly collected mushrooms. You can use chanterelle or all kinds of boletus or the brown champignons from the supermarket
- Salami piccante (get the European one from Tader Joe’s if you are from the US), the thin and hot bell peppers, referred to as Pizza Diavolo
- King prawns and garlic, without cheese
- Proscuitto di parma – baked – and when out of oven, rucola and parmigiano reggiano added
- Thuna, a freshly sliced onion in rings, some chili
A new creation of mine is Pizza with mozarella, gorgonzola with mascarpone, fresh figs and proscuitto from Alto Adige, better known in the German language as Tyrolean Speck. You find the picture on instagram:
http://instagram.com/p/s2Usj1n93R
Another creation of mine is Pizza with a cheese from the mountains, strong in taste, called Andreas Hofer cheese – but any stronger cheese will do – prawns which have been fried for one minute with garlic, and thin sliced zucchini. You find the picture on instagram:
http://instagram.com/p/p6sCGpH97S
Put the toppings but don’t overload your pizza, the above showed pictures are good examples and in the description is given, what I used. After 10 to 15 min in the preheated oven enjoy your pizza! There will be constantly new entries, since I love to experiment with my pizzas and always try new compositions. For the moment please be patient, I have to take new pictures, when I do pizza the next time 🙂
BeNicoMa 