Everybody loves pizza, but not everyone knows how easy is to make one!
Since it's Friday I decided to share with you my proven recipe for awesome pizza so you have a chance to do it during the weekend.
Ingredients
The amount provided is perfectly enough for average size pies (Ø 35cm/14").
Pizza dough:
- 500 g of type 00 flour (I personally recommend this one)
- 300 ml of warm water
- 12.5 g of salt
- a tiny ball of fresh yeast
Toppings:
- tomato sauce (just used whole tomatoes, smash them, add some salt and basil leaves and cook for a while, San Marzano tomatoes are the best!)
- mozzarella cheese (if you have access to Mozzarella di Bufala that's great, if not use regular one)
- olive oil
- fresh basil leaves
Equipment:
- a big plastic box
- a pizza stone
- a pizza shovel (a short wooden one is perfectly enough; they are often being included to a pizza stone)
Preparing the dough
- Use your hands to mix flour with salt.
- Dissolve yeast in the water, then add the mixture into the flour.
- Knead the dough (here is a good tutorial)
- When the dough is ready put it into a bowl, make a cross cut (this will make the dough rise sideways instead of going up) and wrap the bowl with a plastic kitchen foil and let it rest ... for 24h!
We are using a very low amount of yeast so long resting time will allow them to do their job & the pizza will remain easily digested.
After 24h take out the dough and cut it into three even pieces, make three dough balls (here is a video showing how), then let them rest for another 2-3 hours in a plastic box sprinkled with flour.
The baking process
Setup
I am using the baking stone as this give the best results, but you can use a pizza pan as well.
- Set up the oven to the highest temperature available and preheat the pizza stone. My oven has the limit of 250C in regular mode & 300C in grill mode so I am heating it up to 250C then switching to grill mode to get the highest temperature (give the stone at least 30 min to heat up).
Streching the dough
Let's make that pizza! Let's take out the dough ball from the plastic box. Well, technically it's not a ball now (at least it should be), anyway we need to stretch it a bit more (once again a video showing how, sorry but it really hard for me to explain the technique in words).
We have our dough stretched & ready. Let's take a pizza shovel, sprinkle it with flour so the dough doesn't stick to it, and put the pie on it. Put a bit of olive oil in the middle, tomato sauce (too much is not good as it will make pizza extra moist) and spread it over the whole pie and let get ready for some baking!
Wait ... where are the toppings? The trick is that in the professional pizza ovens reaches the temperature around 500C which make the baking process extra short (the dough is well baked, but the cheese is not totally melted.
So I figured out that if bake the dough with tomato sauce first for ~2 minutes, then take it out, add the mozzarella, basil leaves and bake for another minute or two, I achieve the best results. This way make the dough well baked and the mozzarella cheese stays nice and white. Now all you have to do is adding some basil leaves
EXTRA TIP: When sliding a dough from the shovel on the baking stone you can gently blow some air under the pie, this will make pizza slide of the shovel really smooth.
Et voila! Our crispy, cheeseee, delicious pie!
Top comments (30)
here I am thinking this is some strange title for an even stranger coding approach. Turns out it’s actually a recipe. Great pizza btw :)
Hehe, thanks!
Man you killed me! 😆
I am originally from Napoli area, pizza fanatic too, there was a moment in my childhood I wasn’t eating anything but pizza!
I will share my recipes with you as soon as I am back from holidays!
Wooow! Yes, please !!!!
It is undeniable that programming has taken a lot from the two oldest activities: cooking and construction.
I think that you bring this topic for spiritual enjoyment but I will make you some rare question that comes to my mind :
"Given that the programming process is like making the recipe... which would be then the equivalent step to 'baking' ? “
Compiling?
Javascript Pizza would be:
"When the dough is ready try to eat it. It is raw dough, but you'll use so much condiments that your guests would tell you: It tastes better than baked ones.
Every day there is a new condiments in the market, many of them taste the same. And you'll need a lot of time to master the art to combine them."
:-D
Python compiles in the moment of execution. That would be like this:
"When the dough is ready, you can start to eat. Once the knife touch the dough your piece, it will bake himself during the trajectory to your mouth.
In order to prevent your guests to eat bad pieces, the advice is that you put your friend called Jenkins to automatically cut the all the dough so you can see if the whole pizza is good before serving to the guests."
:-)
And what about scripting languages ? Running the all tests ?
And what would be a project dependency ? One ingredient ? Or one cooking tool ?
Which would be the "thermomix" of every stack ? Jenkins ?
I know this recipe and I can tell that it's amazing! Pizza turns out great. But I really have super huge problems with transporting pizza onto the baking stone. Any tips or videos on that?
Also, I believe I have the same pizza desk as shown on your picture :D
I am using a very simple pizza/bread shovel.
Try:
This should make pizza slide off the shovel pretty easily :)
I've done these things (you mention them in your text as well). I was hoping for some protips :D But nevertheless, I will try to make some pizza during my vacations, because it was hundreds of times better than the best ones that you order.
Sorryyyy :( Maybe the dough is to wet or... honestly I don't know. Since I am using the shovel I have never had any problems with transporing a pizza onto the stone.
Yeah I think that it might be too wet. Plus it easily rips, so I think the problem lies there :(
What a beautiful pizza! I love Mozzarella di Bufala but toppings aside, I want a nice bubbly thick crust. I'll have to give your recipe a try.
We've actually used an outdoor grill with a pizza stone to achieve that really high heat without heating up the house.
Now I want pizza for dinner...
Outdoor grill is another option yes, I ate pizza made like that, but I have not yet made it myself. Soon though 🍕
Nice recipe. Thanks for the hints for the baking process. So far, I had the problem that the dough was not totally just under the toppings, while the sides and the bottom were already fine. I know what to do.
As you let your dough rise for a full day, have you considered using sourdough instead of fresh yeast?
Not yet, but will definitely add it to my experiments list :)
double like!
Nice Tomek, this one came out awesome.
I too am using pizza stone and like you have said it is best to first bake the dough without the mozzarella it’s best.
Also I leave the dough anywhere from 24 to even 72 hours in the fridge for slow fermentation. This creates more light dough.
Pretty much matches the pizza course I did last year. The only diff was that we added the salt last, after kneading a little, because of yeast. Also the water shouldn‘t be too warm.
And we added oil to the dough.
Could you provide a link to your pizza stone?
I am using this one.
Instructions unclear. Wrote "Hello World!" on pizza.
Needs more JavaScript!
Username checks out
Always a fan of margherita pizza...it looks delicious!! Have a fav place I go to in Atlanta...will likely be hitting the place up tomorrow (assuming they're open) :-)
🍕 Forever!
This is a very good Friday post.
This is perfect. You're proving what you say in your description, my friend.
if I ever get my own house, I'll try it. 6 years left
thanks