For years now, I’ve been making pizza from scratch (well, close enough) and over the years, I’ve started to perfect it.
This afternoon, I set about making some pizza bases and decided it was high time I blogged about how I put together a pizza or two.
The Recipe: Pizza Base
Ingredients
4 1/2 cups of flour, chilled*
1 3/4 teaspoons of salt**
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon of yeast
1 3/4 cups of ice cold water
* For best results, refrigerate overnight, or for more instant results cover and place in a freezer for 5-10 minutes before use
** I like to use sea salt which has been crushed, but regular table salt is fine
Preparation
- In a large bowl, combine flour, salt and yeast, then mix well.
- Once mixed, then pour in the oil and half of the water, stirring to combine with the dry mixture
- Keep mixing and add the rest of the water so that the mixture is well distributed
- The flour will bind and become very tacky. If using hands, keep a bowl of ice cold water handy to rinse your hands as you mix
- Keep mixing until the mixture starts to bind and collects less loose flour
- Sprinkle a layer of flour onto a good flat surface like a bench top and extract the mixture from the bowl
- Start kneading the dough into the flour, continually working the dough inside to out, picking up flour as you go
- The dough should start to become less tacky
- Keep repeating this kneading over and over again until the dough is smooth and absorbs almost no new flour from the bench
- Once the dough loses it’s stickiness, roll into a ball
- Take a bowl and grease it lightly with olive oil
- Put the dough into the bowl and cover with cling wrap (saran wrap)
- Place the bowl someplace warm for 40 minutes to let the dough rise slightly
Part 2: toppings and final prep
- Start preparing your toppings!
-
Once 40 minutes has elapsed, remove dough from bowl and knead out a final time. The dough may “sigh” slightly as the air escapes
-
Preheat your oven at 180’C/350’F (fan forced) or 200’C/390’F (conventional)
-
Even out the base over a greased pizza tray (or whatever you have)
- Apply pizza base to the pizza with the reverse side of a soup spoon (great consistency)
- Add cheese and toppings. I put meat first, then accompaniments like mushroom, capsicum and sun dried tomatoes.
- Insert into oven and set a timer for 10 minutes
- After 10 minutes check on the pizza and extend for a further 10 minutes or until fully cooked
- Once ready, remove from oven and cut into slices
Serving the Pizza
In pictures! I use ‘pizza scissors’ instead of the traditional pizza cutter as it doesn’t disturb the topping half as much.
