Is there a kid out there, who doesn’t love pizza? Mine love it. When I ask Amelia what she wants for dinner, her usual response is pizza (or chicken nuggets). I usually make pizza once a week or so. It’s great for the school lunchbox or for an afternoon snack when the kids come home from school – famished. When 3:00pm hits, they’re always famished.
I used to buy pizza bases from the grocery store and just add the toppings. But one day, I decided to make my pizza dough from scratch and was converted. I haven’t bought a grocery store pizza base, since.
The dough is really easy to make and the best thing is that you know exactly what ingredients are going into the pizza and what you’re feeding your family.
A basic cheese pizza is our family favourite. Amelia isn’t a big fan of tomato sauce, so I make it with an olive oil base.
Ingredients:
DOUGH (makes 3 pizzas)
1/4 cup hot water
1 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup warm water
2 tbsp olive oil + extra for greasing
4 cups plain flour + extra flour for dusting
TOPPING (for one garlic pizza):
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp crushed garlic
Grated tasty cheese
Grated pecorino cheese
Fresh rosemary leaves
Method:
1. Whisk hot water, yeast and sugar in a large bowl. Set aside in a draught free area for 10 minutes or until frothy.
2. Add water, oil, salt and 3 cups of the flour and stir until combined. Gradually add the remaining flour and using your hands bring the mixture together until a dough forms.
3. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until dough is soft and smooth (and a little sticky).
4. Shape dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl. Roll the dough around until it’s coated in oil.
5. Cover with cling film and and blanket. Place in a warm location for 1 hour until it doubles in size. (I usually place it in a sunny spot in front of a closed window).
6. When risen, punch down on the the dough to knock out the air bubbles. Stand for a further 30 minutes.
7. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees celcius.
8. Lightly oil 3 pizza trays. Separate the dough into 3 balls (makes 3 pizzas).
Garlic & Rosemary, two cheese pizza {topping}
9. Spread the dough onto the tray with your fingers or use a rolling pin to roll it out on a floured surface to the desired thickness and then place on a tray.
9. Drizzle with olive oil and spread the crushed garlic and rosemary. Sprinkle on the two cheeses.
10. Bake for approximately 10-12 minutes until the cheese has melted and the base is cooked.
11. Serve while hot and crunchy.
I was sent a Bertolli Olive Oil pack, to try out, which is the oil I used when making this pizza.
It’s funny because this is the brand of oil I already use at home. I generally use the Classic Bertolli Olive Oil (yellow cap) in most of my cooking. I have a Mediterranean family background, so was brought up eating olive oil. My husband is English, so isn’t as accustomed to the stronger taste of the extra virgin olive oil.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil = Produced from the first pressing of olives without filtration. It has a strong taste and is great for salads or to infuse to make flavoured oil (eg garlic or chilli).
Classic Olive Oil = Extracted from the second or third pressing of the olives.
Light Olive Oil = Mild, neutral flavour. Great to use in sweet baking or shallow frying.
Other than everyday use, do you have any recipe ideas where olive oil is the hero of the dish?
What are your favourite pizza toppings?
Oh yum, your pizza looks delicious. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
ReplyDeleteThat looks SO tasty!! I want one, but to be honest, too lazy to make one! I'll just look and drool :)
ReplyDeleteGreat looking recipe! Through our local community college years ago, I took a class from an Italian woman for 'Made from Scratch Italian Pizza' (also her class for "Homemade Italian Cookies for the holidays". Since that time, I have never bought pizza sauce from the stores. I actually rarely bought it prior to taking her class because I've always been a bake from scratch person. Her sauce recipe however was really a good one. She actually gave a family treasured recipe for a Sicilian pizza which was a deep dish and shockingly enough, has thinly sliced potatoes in the layers. It really was interesting but, wow, what a difference it made to the taste and texture while eating it. Yum. Her sauce, however, is much thinner than most pizza sauces and is full of onions that were thinly sliced and cooked slowly in the pan first until they got a beautiful golden color. Making her sauce though can take as much as 4 hours and while it is an awesome tasting sauce and makes a lot, I don't always have that kind of time as I used to, not to mention dealing with the pain I have now which I did not years ago in my legs making it hard for me to stand to make a quick meal, much less something taking that long. Your recipe looks wonderful. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAs far as olive oil, I never cook with anything else in my kitchen. I always use the Extra Virgin Olive Oil because I love the taste of that so much more. I have another recipe for "Chicken Fajita Pizza" which is actually one I got at the huge Diabetes Expo in Chicago, IL that's held each year. I've made this pizza for many people and not one of them would guess it was diabetic friendly. It's THAT good. For this recipe I need to have cooked and cubed chicken breasts and to cook them, I drizzle olive oil into my frying pan to brown the chicken with some fresh ground pepper and at times will add a bit of butter for an extra bit of flavor (yea, not part of the recipe lol). It really makes the chicken taste great going onto this pizza. I have actually done this for chicken I'm using for a quick meal too but once browned, I add a little chicken broth to the pan and cover it to simmer till it's done. Olive oil is one ingredient I refuse to run out of in my kitchen.......and butter, but yea, that's another story. LOL My husband laughs at me because I freak out if I have less than a full pound of butter in my kitchen at any given time. :) I do not use margarine. EVER! Yuck.