Homemade Pizza

Some like to buy shoes or clothes, i like to shop for food supplies, it always makes me happy. From the tiniest funny spoon, to the expensive, but so usefull and beautifull Kitchenaid. Afterall i have a blog about food ;)

I'm lucky enough to have a kachelofen in the house i live in, something very traditional here, which is basically a central wood heater. The good thing is, it has an oven in it, to make some pizza thru the winter. Even if the heat isn't as easy to handle as in a regular oven, the pizza does have that "ristorante" taste to it.

But in the summer, i'm not going to fire it up when it's 30°C outside. If you know the british Chef Jamie Oliver, you may have seen he uses a marble stone he found in his garden, to bake the pizza in his oven. I don't own any marble, but instead i try to be creative.

IKEA sells a backing tray for cookies that is really thin, so after i saw it on their website, i thought this could work too for the pizza. I've tried it tonight and even if it isn't quite the same as the wood oven, it's still pretty damn good!

Homemade Pizza Dough (from the website http://www.marmiton.org/)

For 3 to 4 pizzas

500gr of Flour
1 Pack of Instant Yeast
1 Teaspoon of Salt
1 Teaspoon of Sugar
1/4 Liter of Tepid Water
1 or 2 Tablespoon of Olive Oil

Put the salt, the sugar and the instant yeast in a bowl, add the tepid water and mix everything well together. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it for about 10min, you need to see some foam forming at the top.

Put the flour in a big bowl and make a hole in the center. Pour the water/yeast/sugar/salt mix in the middle and mix it in slowly with your hand. When it starts to form a dough, put it on a floured working surface, and work it for about 5 minutes. Add the olive oil in, and keep knitting it until it's smooth and shiny.

Leave it for about an hour under a wet cloth. Afterwards, separate it into 3 to 4 parts. I generally just do one pizza at the time, so i pack the rest individually in and put it into the freezer until my next pizza craving, just think to take it out of the freezer about 5 hours before.

For the topping

for 1 Pizza

Tomato sauce
1 Ball of Mozzarella Di Buffalla
4 Slices of Coppa
6 Olives
A few Leaves of Fresh Basil
Thym, Oregano...

Preheat your oven to 220°C

Obviously, pizza topping is all about what you like, what you have on hand, and even just tomato sauce and mozzarella does it for me.

I like to make my own tomatoe sauce when i can, i cook it for a long time because i like it to be almost a paste on the pizza. Obviously some tomato concentrate would do the trick too, but i would add a bit of garlic to it.

Roll your dough out, or if you like to live dangerously, try it the pizzaiolo way ;). Place the dough on the tray, and don't leave it for too long, you don't want it to rise again.

Spread your tomato sauce on it, place the topping, in this case coppa and olives, and spread the pieces of mozzarella on it. Sprinkle some thym, oregano, or any herbs you like.
Put it into the oven for about 10 minutes, but really, keep an eye on it depending how you like it cooked. When it comes out of the oven, sprinkle some freshly chopped basil on it.

This is one of my favorit saturday night dinner, in front of the TV watching some documentary. Yes, i know, i'm a real Party-person ;). And on that note i wish you all a nice week and i'll be back after my week of holiday :)