Home-made pizza

Ingredients

Here is what you need for two (rectangular) oven trays of pizza:

But no worries if you don't have everything... the most important ingredient is hunger ;)

Preparation

Pour the flour in a large bowl that can contain about twice as much flour as you're putting now. The extra space is needed because the dough will rise.

Stir the yeast in the flour.

Add the warm water little by little, stirring with a spoon. When stirring becomes difficult, add a pinch of salt and start kneading the dough with your hands.

Keep on kneading for a while—5 minutes or more. At some point you will have the impression that there is not enough water or not enough flour. Resist the temptation of adding extra water/flour, and keep kneading: the dough should become more and more homogeneous, and your hands should start to look a little bit cleaner.

Only when you're sure that something is lacking, feel free to add a bit of water or flour. The "final" version of the dough should stick to your hands just a bit.

Add 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, and knead the dough for another minute or two.

Leave the dough in its large bowl and cover the bowl with either a (clean) towel or cling film. Let it rest inside your kitchen (or in the fridge, if it's too hot). I usually let the dough rest for 10-15 hours, but even just 4 hours should be fine.

If you've let it rest for 10-15 hours, it's apparently a good idea (I don't know why) to knead it again 4 hours before you cook it.

About an hour before eating, consider cooking the tomato sauce: this can be as easy as choosing to not cook it at all (you can just put it directly on the dough and let it cook in the oven), or as fancy as making the sauce yourself from actual tomatoes and flavouring it with some fresh basil leaves... or any compromise in between. You choose! I usually like to sauté some garlic and/or onion, add a bottle of tomato sauce and let it briefly cook over high heat, add salt and spices, add basil leaves, and let it cook for a while over very low heat (even 30-40 minutes), until it looks more like a purée than like a liquid. This way it tastes great and doesn't droop on the plate.

Meanwhile, turn on the oven and put it at around 250-260 degrees Celsius. Put aside the oven trays.

While the oven is starting up and the sauce is cooking (or not, if you've decided that you'll cook it later directly in the oven), cut the mozzarella (and silano, if you have it) in small pieces the volume of a game dice. Put the pieces in a bowl and don't be afraid of letting them wait there for some minutes, especially if it's all mozzarella: the more water they lose, the less droopy your pizza slices will be. In fact, my suggestion of replacing part of the mozzarella with a harder (but sweet) cheese is aimed at making the final pizza slices less droopy.

Lay out one baking paper for each oven tray of pizza you want to make. On the baking paper, put a tiny bit of dough (1 tablespoon?) so that it won't stick to the pizza. Alternatively you can put some olive oil: that works and tastes equally good.

Put half of the dough on each baking paper and spread it out by hand or with a rolling pin, until it almost fills the paper. If you spread it by hand, be careful not to create holes.

Add some tomato sauce (you choose how much) and spread it uniformly on the dough with the back of a spoon.

Add the pieces of cheese.

Add any extra toppings (bell pepper slices, salami...)

Add two pinches of salt, some origan, and let a thread of extra-virgin olive oil zig-zag over the pizza, like you were a chef in some (weird?) movie.

Put the baking paper with pizza on an oven tray. There are various smart ways to do this. I leave as an exercise to the reader to find a way for one person without helpers to put a whole pizza on a burning-hot oven tray that you forgot in the oven when you turned it on. There's an easy way ;)

Put the oven tray with pizza in the oven (rather on top, but not too much otherwise it can take fire—true story). Check back in 5-10 minutes: if the back of the pizza has gotten some color, it's ready to be eaten!

Tips

If an extra person is joining, no problem: add salami as a topping. Meat and other heavy toppings fill your stomach faster, easily allowing for an extra guest!

The more yeast you add, the less rising time you need. This can be helpful if you're in a rush.

The more yeast you add, the harder it is to digest the pizza. If you have time, prepare your dough in advance and make sure that it has enough water. This way you might be able to put a bit less yeast.

If you forgot to buy baking paper, clean your oven trays. Once you've cleaned them you can coat them with oil or butter, and make some flour stick to the oil or butter. You can get the flour to spread quite evenly by hitting and shaking the oven tray.

Feel free to make round pizzas, but keep in mind that rectangular pizzas can hold more topping. Same goes for when you're spreading the tomato sauce: pizzas with a nice and large restaurant-looking crust allow for less topping.

It's possible to use the grill instead of a proper oven tray, as long as you have baking paper.