easy-peasy homemade pizza

best pizza I’ve ever made!

This pizza is just amazing – there’s no two ways about it. I got the recipe from Liz’s blog My Favourite Pastime (which you should definitely check out!) and she kindly said I could do a post on it.

I think it’s a testament to how good and easy a recipe it is (and how often I’ve made it!) by the fact that I no longer have to check the ingredients or quantities when I make it. It also requires no kneading at all so you can feel like a pizza pro regardless of your baking experience!

 

Ingredients to make one pizza:

• 250g strong white bread flour (£1.30, Wrights, Tesco)
• 1 teaspoon fast action dried yeast (£0.83, Tesco)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil (£1.20, Tesco)
• 180ml warm water (I just test with my hand to see if it is warm)

my tomato sauce:

• tinned chopped tomatoes (£0.39, Tesco)
• tomato purée (£0.50, Tesco)
• dried basil (£0.70, Tesco)
• dried oregano (£0.70, Tesco)

my toppings:

• ball of mozzarella (£0.47, Tesco)
• wild rocket (£1.00, Tesco)
• mixed peppers (£0.99, Tesco)

Process:

1. In a large mixing bowl put the flour, yeast, sugar and salt.
2. Make a well in the centre and pour in the water and olive oil. Now combine everything with a spoon.
3. Wet your hands and use them to gather the rest of the mixture together. Then place some cling film over the bowl and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours, and no more than 24.
4. When you want to eat, flour a surface and lay the dough on top. Cover it with a tea towel and leave for 20 minutes.
5. I like roasting my peppers before they go on my pizza so heat up the oven to 220C, chop peppers into large chunks and roast in the oven for roughly 15 minutes with a little olive oil. You can of course just add the peppers raw to the pizzas when the go in the oven but I think they’re nicer when they’ve had a little extra time to roast. This works well as you’re waiting for the dough anyway and the oven will be at the right temperature for the pizza too.
6. Another thing you can do whilst waiting for the dough is make the tomato sauce. This is my own tomato sauce which doubles up as a pasta sauce and can be made in advance and frozen to save time. Place a tin of chopped tomatoes in a saucepan on a medium heat, add a tablespoon of tomato puree along with a tablespoon of dried oregano and one of basil and stir. Add some freshly ground pepper and leave to reduce for roughly 10 minutes. If you like the sauce to be smooth you can blend it with a hand-blender, but this isn’t always necessary.
7. When the 20 minutes is up, roll the dough out, making sure you have plenty of flour on the rolling pin and the surface so it doesn’t stick. I think it’s a lot easier using a rolling pin as you can get it much thinner – bare in mind that the dough increases slightly in thickness in the oven. Apparently using a rolling pin gets rid of air bubbles in the pizza so if you like them then you’ll have to stretch it by hand.
8. When you’re happy with the size, place the dough onto a baking tray that has been greased with a small amount of olive oil. Spoon some tomato sauce onto the pizza and spread out with a spoon, leaving a crust round the edge. If you’ve followed my tomato sauce recipe there will be some leftover so you can freeze it for another day.
9. Slice up the mozzarella and distribute on the pizza. I prefer pizzas that aren’t covered in cheese so leave areas of sauce, these can be covered with peppers.
10. Finally add the peppers. If there are a few of these spare they’ll go nicely into pasta the next day (see my deli-style pasta).
11. Place in the oven for 10-15 minutes until the crust is going brown and cheese is bubbling. Garnish with rocket leaves and enjoy!

Total cooking time: 20 minutes dough resting time followed by 10-15 minutes in the oven

Preparation time: roughly 15 minutes to make the dough, and another 10 to make the sauce

Price per pizza: between £2/£3 depending on what ingredients you have already, and the flour, yeast etc can be kept for a few more pizzas.

This works out as such a cheap meal, it makes you realise how much restaurants overcharge for this kind of thing! If you make the sauce ahead it really isn’t very time consuming either.

I’ve made this recipe at least once a week since I saw it on Liz’s blog, and I don’t think I’ll ever look back! Making homemade pizza felt like such an effort when I was younger, but this really couldn’t be easier.