“The only thing we have to fear is a lack of pizza” ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Everybody loves a good pizza! In this post I will describe how to make a simple, yet tasty pizza dough, how to make the basic tomato sauce and how you can vary with pizza toppings.

Ingredients

For the base of 2 pizza’s

• 1/2 cube of fresh yeast (21 grams in total)
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 300 ml lukewarm water
• 500 grams plain flour
• pinch of salt
• extra virgin olive oil

Sugo ~ basic tomato sauce

• 500 grams passata (ready made plain tomato sauce)
• 1 finely chopped onion
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 5 basil leafs
• extra virgin olive oil

Toppings (can vary)

• 1 mozzarella cheese chopped
• 1 potato finely sliced
• basil leafs
• bacon pieces

Get started with the pizza dough | Take a bowl and add 1/2 block of fresh yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar and 300 ml lukewarm water. Stir and leave to rest for about 10 minutes so that it starts foaming nicely.

In a separate bowl mix 500 grams of plain flour with a pinch of salt – important to mix well because salt slows down the yeast process.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Mix with a spoon then continue with your hands by folding the dough in the bowl for about 3 minutes. Grease the bowl with extra virgin olive oil and leave the dough covered with a clean kitchen towel for about 1 to 1,2 hours.

Cut half the dough and grease a baking tin with extra virgin olive oil. Gently ease the dough and spread it to fit the size of the tin (see below).

 

 

 

 

 

Add the sugo | Whilst the pizza dough is rising you can prepare the sugo. Fry 1 finely chopped onion in 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add the 500 grams of tomato sauce and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes. Then add 2 teaspoons of sugar and some basil leafs. Leave to simmer for another 5 minutes.

Bake the pizza with sugo first | Bake the pizza in the oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. Take the pizza from the oven and add (delicate) toppings like mozzarella cheese and basil leafs. Then bake the pizza for another 5 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. If you have toppings like potato and bacon, olives and capers you don’t need to bake the pizza without the toppings. You can just do a total of 15 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

You can dress the pizza with anything you like, but usually the rule is: the simpler, the better! Example: potatoes and small bacon pieces (leave out the sugo). Finely slice the potato pieces and sprinkle bacon and extra virgin olive oil. Bake the pizza for 15 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

 

Buon appetito!

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