So who doesn’t like pizza? Most people do right and making them yourself makes the pizza experience even better! There’s loads of different styles, ranging from your classic Roman thin based pizza to your hand stretched ancient Napoli, then there’s your thicker American bases from Chicago and of course the sorry excuses of certain fast food chain pizzas.
I’m going to give you a recipe for the Queen of pizza doughs. From Naples, the birth place of pizza, where they’ve been making pizza as we know it the longest; (let’s not get into Turkish pizza!) So they know the deal, they live and breathe Pizza all over Italy, but in Naples especially it is everywhere. I’ll also tell you a quick way of cooking it that will revolutionise your homemade pizzas!
Naples style pizza
The Recipe
This recipe requires a wee bit of time but the result is worth it! Most pizza doughs will be made in a few hours with lots of dried yeast, but can still taste amazing. The full 24 hour slow rise with small amounts of yeast we use here really develops that flavour.
So here we go:
This will make around 8 Pizzas. You can always freeze the unused balls for another day.
Ingredients
1kg 0.0 Flour (most supermarkets have this)
600ml Water
2 Tbsp Salt
2g Fresh Yeast (ask your baker or in your supermarket usually by the butter)
That’s it, no olive oil, no sugar, simple and effective!!
Method
Dissolve your yeast in the 600ml of water, in a measuring jug. Put all the flour into a big bowl and make a well in the centre. You can just dump all the flour onto a clean work surface but I find this helps keep the flour carnage under control. Pour your yeasty water into the well and add your salt, then use a wooden spoon to mix all the ingredients together. After about 5 mins move to your work surface and beat the living daylights out of the dough for 15 mins, I mean really go for it!
After you’ve taken all that tension and stress out on your lovely pizza dough, put it lovingly back into the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel for 15 mins.
Now get a bowl, some weighing scales and a big knife. Cut your dough into 220g balls and one at a time fold the dough twice in on its self before rolling it into a perfect ball. A good technique is keep your hand in a claw shape over the dough. Make fast circles pushing the dough into the surface as you go, this will force out the air and make a perfect ball. Put the balls into a flour dusted container, ideally plastic storage containers or something similar, then dust with more flour and cover with cling film. Now it’s a waiting game for 24 hours.
Dough balls
The Sauce
Ingredients
1 500g tin or jar of the best quality Italian Plum toms.
Pinch of Salt
The sauce must be uncooked and be the best quality toms you can find. Grown on the slopes of Mt Vesuvius, San Marzano are considered some of the best, but if you can’t get ahold of them use the best Italian plums you can find.
Blend the toms with a pinch of salt, keep some texture in the sauce though, you don’t want a puree.
How to cook your Pizza; A Miraculous Discovery
If you have a wood fired oven then you know what to do here! If not have a look at how to make one in our previous post. For those of you without a wood fired oven don’t fear.
Pizza lovers worldwide have found a way to cook your pizza way better than just putting it in the oven for 20 mins on a pizza stone or tray.
The Method
Get a medium sized frying pan, no oil, searing hot, full wack, as well as getting your grill on full with the rack in the oven as close to the grill as possible.
Roll your dough out to the size of your pan, put your Dough in the the pan, you will see the dough instantly bubbling. Quickly put your sauce on and cheese and some other toppings. Go sparingly though, ‘less is more’ is the Italian way. It will also cook better with less topping.
Use a spatula to look under the pizza, when it’s nicely browned put your frying pan under the grill until the top is browned and only just burned, just like a woodfired pizza. Eat straight away and witness the wonder.
Tomatoes
