Pizza Two Ways
Posted by Natalie in Uncategorized
I make pizza quite frequently. I’m not sure if this is one of those things I do unconsciously to torture myself or if I do it out of a genuine desire to master some kind of technique. Currently, unconscious torture seems more likely as I’m acutely aware of how futile pizza making is when dealing with your average domestic oven. They just don’t get hot enough. Yes you can buy a pizza stone and preheat your oven at its highest setting for 10 hours, but guess what? Your Pizza will always be mediocre.
So if I’ve come to the conclusion that Pizza at home is hopeless, why try at all? I suspect if I lived in a city where finding a great pizza wasn’t like finding a needle in a haystack I wouldn’t bother. But alas, I live in Vancouver, a city known for it’s restaurants, but without a single pizza place of merit. While there are times I wish I could just abstain, Pizza is in my top 5 favorite things to eat so this would be a challenge I’m not willing to face. Also, despite how utterly hopeless pizza making at home may be, I always prefer my homespun attempts to the complete disappointment of eating pizza in a local restaurant. Something about having a wood-burning pizza oven and not being able to produce decent pizza is completely unacceptable to me.
Pizza Two Ways – Makes 2 medium sized pizzas – recipe adapted from Jamie Oliver
For the Dough
3 1/2 cups white bread flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 package of active dry yeast
1 teaspoon raw sugar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
In a medium sized bowl mix the yeast, sugar, olive oil and water and set aside for 5 to 10 minutes or until it bubbles up a bit.
In the bowl of your stand mixer sift the flour and salt together. Once the yeast mixture is ready make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour it in. What I like to do is mix it in roughly by hand or with a wooden spoon and once the flour is about half mixed in I turn to the dough hook to do all of the hard work. After about 4 minutes on a medium speed I turn out the dough and kneed by hand until I get a soft and springy dough. This wont be long as your mixer should have already done this.
Place the dough in a flour dusted bowl, making sure to dust the top as well and allow it to double in size. This usually takes about 1 hour to 1 1 /2 hours.
After the dough has risen turn it out onto a flour dusted surface and punch down getting all of the air bubbles out. Divide the dough into 3 balls and roll out to about 1/4 of an inch thickness.
For the Sauce:
You could skip this step and just buy a sauce but this sauce is just so simple and far superior to anything I have found premade.
4 garlic gloves, sliced
1 can plum tomatoes
fresh basil
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium heat and once hot add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the sliced garlic. Allow the garlic to infuse the oil but don’t let it burn, this will only take about a minute. Add in the plum tomatoes crushing them with your hand as you add them into the pot along with the fresh basil which you can tear up roughly as you add it.
Allow the sauce to come to a boil and then remove it from the heat and strain it through a fine sieve. Once strained, pour the sauce back into the pot and allow to simmer until the desired consistency is reached. I like a thicker sauce for pizza.
For the Toppings:
For toppings anything goes and this time around I just used what I had on hand. I tend to favor pizzas of a simpler variety with just one or two toppings.
a handful of green olives sliced
sliced fresh goats cheese
sliced parma ham
pineapple
buffalo mozzarella, about 2 balls
Before assembling the pizzas preheat your oven to its highest setting and allow to preheat for about an hour or so with a pizza stone if you have one, before baking your pizzas.
Place your rolled out dough onto a semolina dusted pizza peel and top with sauce. I made a vegetarian pizza with the olives, goat cheese and mozzarella as well as a pizza with the ham, pineapple and mozzarella.
Bake until the crust is browned and the cheese is bubbling, the time will depend on how hot your oven gets, for me it was about 10 – 12 minutes.
