Homemade Italian Pizza (Margherita)
I can assure you this will be THE Italian pizza recipe you'll swear by. Trust me when I say so: my dad, brother and I have been my mom's guinea pig for YEARS before she came up with the best pizza recipe. This has been tried and tested over and over. Here you are:
Makes 3-4 pizzas:
Dough:
600 gr of flour
320 ml of water (1-1/3 cups)
20 ml of extra virgin olive oil
1 packet of active dry yeast (7 gr)
5 gr of sugar (1 teaspoon)
10 gr of salt (2 tsp)
Toppings:
Basil
Dried oregano
Dough:
Mix the yeast with water and sugar in a small bowl, add EVO (extra virgin olive oil). Take a bigger bowl, place the flour in there, and add the contents of the smaller bowl together with the salt. Start mixing all the ingredients together with your hands until they're all combined. Remove the dough and put it on a smooth surface, mixing the ingredients better to form a ball. Once the dough is well combined and you have a smooth ball, take a sharp knife and gently mark a cross. Take the big bowl that you used at the beginning to mix the ingredients, sprinkle some flour and place your dough in it, cross up. Take a kitchen towel and cover your pizza dough for 3-4 hours.
Start pre-heating your oven at 160°C (325°F). If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven. Take the pizza dough out of the bowl. It should be three times bigger than when you placed it in there. Sprinkle some flour on your working surface and cut your dough in 3 or 4 equal parts (it depends if you like your pizza thin crust or a bit thicker). Place the other unused dough aside, making sure that there is flour underneath otherwise it will stick to your surface. Take the first part of the dough and shape it in a circle or in a rectangle depending on your preference, using a rolling pin. Don't push down super hard, otherwise you'll flatten out the air bubbles that make pizza fluffy. Once you have the desired shape, sprinkle a tiny bit more flour on the top of the pizza and flip in over (so that the flour is on the bottom) while placing it on the pizza stone. If you don't have a pizza stone and you are using a regular baking sheet, don't add flour on the pizza, but coat the baking sheet with a thin layer of EVO. Add passata, sprinkle oregano and basil and top with fresh mozzarella. Cook for 10-12 minutes. Take out of the oven, and enjoy!
Thermomix TM31 version:
Place water, EVO, sugar, yeast in Thermomix bowl: 5 sec speed 3. Add flour and salt: 3 minutes on interval speed. Place the dough in a large bowl with some flour, take a sharp knife and gently mark a cross. Take a kitchen towel and cover your pizza dough for 3-4 hours. Follow the same instructions to roll out the dough.
Tips:
You can store cooked pizza in the fridge for up to 3 days.
The original pizza is called Margherita, and it has no toppings.
Popular toppings in Italy are:
ham and mushroom (cook the mushroom right away, add ham in the last 5 minutes)
salame (add salame in the last 2 minutes of cooking)
sausage and mushrooms
ham, mushroom, marinated artichokes and black olives
quattro formaggi (which gets pretty expensive in Vancouver!) consisting of 4 cheeses: mozzarella, fontina, parmigiano and gorgonzola. For this pizza, you'll omit passata and the herbs.
vegetarian option: zucchini, peppers and eggplants
prosciutto (add prosciutto in the last 3 minutes of cooking)
capers and anchovies
gorgonzola, pear and walnuts
hot dogs (add hot dogs in the last 5-6 minutes)
