Homemade Pizza

So many of you make homemade pizza and I'm jealous! I've never made pizza, but I really want to try it. Anyone care to pass on recipes or tips for the dough and sauce? Toppings I can handle!    I have a rectangular stone pan from Pampered Chef that I would use to make this. Thanks!

Heh Heh, I wrote out a pizza recipe for another forum and gave some pizza tips in the homemade naan thread so here you go! (same pizza photo, it's the only one I have!)

Get 450 grams of 00 flour
Dried Yeast
Cup of warm water
2 tblspoons olive oil.


Clear a large surface
Put flour on surface,
Make a well in the middle (clear about 10 cm radius so flour is arranged around in a circle)
Put yeast in well
Add some warm water
Add oil

Start bringing the flour from the edge into the centre and keep doing that until you have dough that you can knead, add more water if you need to
until you have bread dough that is not sticky, add more flour if you put in too much water

leave to rise. don't put it in the oven, you'll kill the yeast, your house is probably warm enough, otherwise stand the bowl it's in in a larger bowl of warm water.
Mine was huge, it was bubbling over the sides of the bowl it was in after an hour.

Stretch the dough out into a circle, add topping etc.

IMPORTANT - If you're using fresh mozerella (you should) then you need to drain it first for a few hours, get either a clean tea towel or some paper towels, put the mozerella balls in it and hang it up somewhere, the water should drain out in a couple of hours and the flavour intensifies, also the water wont seep out and make your base soggy. Use a combination of parmesan and mozerella.


The Baking.

Get your oven as HOT AS POSSIBLE
if you can, turn on your grill as well as your oven.

A pizza stone or granite tile in there helps, or I used a turned over le creuset dish, this will get piping hot and will cook the base, the heat of the oven will cook the top.

Once your oven is really hot, open it up and slide your pizza onto the hot surface in the oven (pizza stone or casserole dish or frying pan or whatever you're using)

your pizza should cook in about 10 minutes.

Here's mine! Was absolutely delicious!!! and crisp on the edge and bottom but soft proper bread inside

Do you have a bread machine?  DH does the dough in the bread machine.  He used to use just strong white bread flour, but now he buys flour that is especially good for making pizza dough with it.  Here's an article that talks about it, but I don't think that's the brand he uses:

http://www.fornobravo.com/brick_oven_cooking/pizza_ingredients/flour.html

A simple red sauce is fairly straightforward - saute onion & garlic in a bit of olive oil.  Tip in a tin of tomatoes.  Season as you like - salt, pepper, Italian herbs (basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, etc - can be one/two or all), maybe a bit of crushed red pepper if you like a chili kick to it.  Let it simmer until it's as thick as you like.

He usually buys the fresh mozzarella ball to dot around the pizza.  We have a pizza stone.

Toppings are anything/everything - pepperoni, chorizo, etc.  But we often have meatless pizzas topped with things like (not all of these at once) onions, olives, peppers, mushrooms, rocket, butternut squash, tomatoes, really any kind of seasonal veg.  Last week he put asparagus on our pizza!

I bought a pizza crust mix from the co-op to make my pizza. In the US I get the Chef Boy R De pizza kits...yeah, I'm lazy.

I also use regular tomato sauce and then sprinkle oregano and sometimes basil on it since i'm allergic to garlic and that's in a lot of sauces.

MaryKate, what is '00 Flour'?? Your pizza looks delicious!!! The dough tips are super helpful. That's the part I'm nervous about. 

Mrs R, no bread machine, unfortunately. Your red sauce sounds like the marinara I typically make, so that's easy enough!

BeccaJSC, yeah, that's what my mom used to do too! She wouldn't even put mozzarella cheese on it, just sprinkle the stuff that comes with the kit! My sister loved those pizzas, me, not so much. The dough was always good, but that's it!

MaryKate, what is '00 Flour'??

I'm not MaryKate, but the link I posted is about that. 

We buy ours in a local deli.

OO flour is the most highly ground flour (like really talcum powder soft) and is high protein.

You can probably use superfine plain or strong white bread, but I always use 00 as I also make pasta and just use bog standard white for sauces/rouxs etc.

I'm not MaryKate, but the link I posted is about that. 

We buy ours in a local deli.

Sorry, I hadn't looked at the link before I posted!

I'll keep an eye out for this. Thanks!

You'll most likely have to source it.  Find out if there's an Italian deli in Dublin - that'd be your best best or a deli that sells a variety of international/Mediterranean stuff.

Or you could mail order perhaps.  You don't have to have it - you can make pizza dough with strong white bread flour & I've seen some post wholemeal recipes too - each crust is a little different (depending on the type of flour).

BeccaJSC, yeah, that's what my mom used to do too! She wouldn't even put mozzarella cheese on it, just sprinkle the stuff that comes with the kit! My sister loved those pizzas, me, not so much. The dough was always good, but that's it!

Oh, we always load ours up with mozzarella, sometimes cheddar and of course, toppings My mom and I are partial to green olives or making them into Hawaiian Pizza with pineapple and ham. 

I'm totally lazy when it comes to sauce...take a tin of chopped tomatoes and throw a bunch of Italian-y herbs in.  I figure with all the toppings, the sauce doesn't have to be perfect

My problem is not being able to get the base cooked, because I don't have any sort of stone or anything - but thanks to the tip about the over-turned Le Creuset dish, I'm going to try this now!!

Slight off the topic question here, but can you make a cake with type 00 flour? So can I use that kind of flour instead of plain flour for a lighter cake?

Slight off the topic question here, but can you make a cake with type 00 flour? So can I use that kind of flour instead of plain flour for a lighter cake?

Hmmm - it talks about using it for 'bread, cookies and pastries' but I would think it has too much gluten for a cake.  Cake flour is also finely milled but would have a very low protein/gluten content - no more than 6-8%, whereas the Molino Caputo Tipo 00 Pizza Flour has a gluten content of about 11%-12%.  But why not try it & see - maybe it's not enough difference to really matter? 

Interestingly enough, I found this discussion of trying to 'make your own' cake flour here in the UK:

http://amerrierworld.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/a-question-of-flour/

We like this Pizza Hut copy cat recipe.

You'll most likely have to source it.  Find out if there's an Italian deli in Dublin - that'd be your best best or a deli that sells a variety of international/Mediterranean stuff.

Or you could mail order perhaps.  You don't have to have it - you can make pizza dough with strong white bread flour & I've seen some post wholemeal recipes too - each crust is a little different (depending on the type of flour).

I buy my 00 flour at Sainsburys.  Tesco also carries it - I think the brand is called McDougalls?