Easy Homemade Pizza

Good pizza can be a real winner when it comes to comfort food. But get it wrong and you will wish you hadn’t taken a bite! Goodness knows that there are plenty available in the supermarkets and efforts are being made to reduce the polystyrene and plastic packaging but the best eco option and indeed taste option is always to make your own.

I made these pizzas with my daughter and her friend one Saturday evening and I felt the need to share our recipe and topping ideas.

PIZZA BASE

280ml Water

2 tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

450g unbleached white bread flour (or pizza flour)

1.5 tsp of salt

0.5 tsp of sugar

1 tsp of easy-blend yeast.

As usual I make my dough in the bread machine. This usually takes about 1.5 hours, but. one it is set up it looks after itself and you get perfect dough every time. Following the guide to your bread machine make the pizza dough.

TOMATO SAUCE

Choose good quality ingredients, as always the results are only as good as the ingredients that go into the recipe.

1 454g tin of chopped tomatoes.

2 tbsp of tomato puree

1 clove of garlic crushed

1 tsp of mixed Italian herbs

Place all of the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a gentle boil. then reduce the heat to a very gentle simmer. Put a lid on the saucepan and allow to simmer slowly for about an hour, keep checking it and stirring it regularly to make sure it isn’t cooking too quickly and sticking to the bottom. After the hour blitz the sauce with a blender and then return to the heat to continue simmering for another 30 minutes or until the dough is done.

Take the dough out of the machine and place it on a lightly floured surface. Knock back the dough. Divide in two. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees C. Roll out your pizza dough (we go for square but its up to you) place onto a prepared (lightly oiled) baking sheet. Once on the baking sheet spread your as much of the tomato sauce as you like onto your pizza bases. I usually find that this quantity will do four pizzas so half of it will go into the freezer for our next batch.

The toppings are all up to your personal taste and your dietary requirements.

The thing to remember is that your cheese goes first, and your other toppings finely sliced on top, you can then add some more mozzarella ripped up on the top of it all if you like. It’s also nice to sprinkle little olive oil and grated parmesan to finish.

We made two versions, one dairy free with Chorizo and a local vegan cheese called Nozzo Mozzo by Left Coast Culture. We just roughly chopped the cheese and sprinkled it over.

For the second pizza we ripped up good quality fresh ham and thinly sliced some mushrooms and placed those over the grated mozzarella then added a little chorizo and some more ripped mozzarella. Just lovely.

Bake in the oven for 15 or so minutes until they are golden, crispy and sizzling.

Serve with a good home salad, I like to add humus and olives. yummy!

Christine McKay31 October 2021Comment