I felt like cooking pizza last night, from scratch.
The dough was the hardest, messiest and most time consuming part of the process. I wanted a thin and crispy base, so found a recipe to follow as I had no idea where to start.
Annabelle Langbein is always a good bet, so I followed her recipe for crispy pizza crust:
Mix 1tsp of honey or sugar, 1.5 cups of water, 2tsp dry yeast and 1/2 cup flour in big bowl. Cover, place in a warm spot and leave for 20mins until a frothy sponge develops.
Add 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup semolina (I used cous cous) and 1 tbsp salt. Kneed until a smooth elastic dough forms (5mins). You will definitely need to add extra flour so that the dough doesn’t stick to the bench or bowl. Divide into 8 or 10 equal parts, shape into balls, oil the tops, place on a greased tray and cover with plastic. Leave to rise until double size.
Next I found through trial and error that the best way to get the 18cm circles required is to line a dinner plate with baking paper and then slowly flatten the balls into a circle to roughly the size of the plate with your hands. Refrigerate until needed and freeze what you don’t need as this recipe makes so many pizza bases you won’t know what else to do with them.
Now comes the fun part of choosing your pizza toppings and layering them on the pizza base. The great thing about pizza is that like a sandwich you can put anything you like on it so it’s a great way to use up leftovers, experiment with new flavour combinations or just stick with your trusty favourite.
I had 4 pizza bases, so chose 4 different topping combinations:
- Puree tin tomato base, sliced garlic, cherry tomatoes, fresh thyme and mozzarella cheese
- Puree tin tomato base, sliced garlic, sliced red onion, sliced mushroom, parma ham and mozzarella cheese
- Puree tin tomato base, sliced garlic, sliced mushroom, fresh thyme and mozzarella cheese
- Pesto base, sliced red onion, parma ham and mozzarella cheese (with fresh rocket added on top to finish once it’s cooked)
TIP: I highly recommend you grease your baking tray very well before you start, otherwise it will stick to the pan and it’s not much fun watching your perfect pizza being ruined at the end after all your hard work!
DanyaFood 