Home made pizza base ideas wanted (and toppings).

[swee'pea99]

Banana, bacon and garlic

Nom
Nom
Nom

No pineapple?

 

[Reynard]

[QUOTE 5232008, member: 259"]I used to make sauce for pizzas but got a right telling off from Neapolitan mates who said to use best quality canned whole pelati and squish them up with your fingers...and they were right. You get a nice fresh tomato taste.[/QUOTE]

That's the thing about Italian cooking - one region's right way is another region's wrong way. I was taught by a sicilian chap at uni.

 

[Reynard]

[QUOTE 5232012, member: 259"]Best tip for making pizzas is use Italian pizza flour (00). It's miles better than standard bread flour.[/QUOTE]

If you can find any. Unless you've got a good Italian deli nearby, it's a devil to get your mitts on. And according to the bods over on a breadmaking forum I'm a member of, not really worthwhile due to the expense.

Best to stick with ordinary bread flour and swap, say 10 to 15% for semolina - which is durum wheat. And use a long bulk ferment if you can as it really adds flavour to the dough.

 

[Reynard]

Home made base as per Reynard (maybe a tad less salt but who's counting?)

It's 2% salt in bakers' percentages - so 12g salt to 600g flour. That's pretty well much par for course.

100% flour
60% water
2% salt
2% yeast (though I typically use a lot less than that, but appreciate that not everyone wants to wait / has the time)
5% oil

 

[Shut Up Legs]

My pizza base is:-
8oz plain or whole meal flour
1tsp salt
1/2 oz fresh yeast, or dried yeast and 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 pint like warm water
1tbsp olive oil

Knead it all together, allow to rest and rise for an hour. Knock back the risen dough, roll and stretch to the required size and shape.

Gas Mk6 for 25 to 30 minutes

I use a thickened Passata and any toppings that take my fancy on the day.

There are rules though!!

Rule #1 No anchovies
Rule #2 There is no rule #2
Rule #3 See Rule #1

Sorry to be , but anchovies should always be on pizzas! They're delicious!

 

[Blue Hills]

[QUOTE 5232028, member: 259"]Better as in better pizzas. It's bugger all to do with being "authentic", more to do with eating good food.

If you tend to buy store-made pizzas and put your own toppings on then de gustibus etc, but it's dead easy to make ones which are miles nicer in texture, smell, and taste.[/QUOTE]
By "authentic" that's exactly what I meant, better pizzas, as in how one expects a pizza base to be, so there's a lot of buggery about it. I meant that it is not "better" flour.

I do somewhere have a recipe (very involved) for a pizza base from an italian who makes very good ones but have never got around to using it. In truth, i think it is very hard to produce a pizza as good as the ones from a decent italian pizzeria. For it's the base which is of course the difficult bit.

Have eaten a lot of pizzas in my time and revere them - unlike the ignorant pretentious idiot who once sneered when I suggested we went for a pizza. At a place I knew to be pretty decent.

Long live the pizza.

 

[Spartak]

Quick & easy pizza.....

Use a tortilla wrap, cover with good quality ketchup, grated cheese.

The kids love it....

Only takes 7-8 minutes in the oven.

 

[Blue Hills]

That's the thing about Italian cooking - one region's right way is another region's wrong way. I was taught by a sicilian chap at uni.

Region? It can go down to town, village, family about so many things. Still now many italians, especially of a certain age, will turn up their noses and worse at foreign food. Though of course much sicilian food is foreign, or, whisper it gently, african in origin.

 

[Blue Hills]

Quick & easy pizza.....

Use a tortilla wrap, cover with good quality ketchup, grated cheese.

The kids love it....

Only takes 7-8 minutes in the oven.

 

[Dave7]

Home made base as per Reynard (maybe a tad less salt but who's counting?) then:

A tablespoon each of olive puree and tomato puree, a sprinkle of herbs (Sainsbury's Italian seasoning works, but anything with oregano in) then add a tin of anchovies, with capers and chopped olives to suit, some blobs of mozzarella, into a hot hot oven then consume with some Puglian or Sicilian red.

I was about to "like" this.....then I read the dreaded word anchovies.....yeuk.

 

[Blue Hills]

I was about to "like" this.....then I read the dreaded word anchovies.....yeuk.

Appreciation of anchovies, olives and brussel sprouts is often something which comes with age i think.

By the by, pizza with chips on top is quite popular amongst young italians.

I have actually seen this horror eaten.

 

[Spartak]

I'm off to Sardinia at the end of the month....
My first meal will be Pizza Napoli in the local restaurant . .
Lovely thin crust pizza with Anchovies & capers ...

Delicious ...

 

[MartinQ]

For the £80 you spent at pizza express you could by a good (panasonic) bread maker and make your own pizza dough easily in 45 min.

 

[subaqua]

Mrs Dave asks if you are pregnant?

 

[Profpointy]

PP's pizza recipe for camping: flour, oil, water - mix it up till it's dough-like then roll or manipulate it till it's pizza shaped.
Stick in a frying pan. Meanwhile cook onions, tomato, herbs, garlick etc in another pan till it looks suitable for pizza topping
Turn over the pizza base to do the other side (a bit like cooking a naan I guess), and spread the topping on - then add anchovies, capers, olives, chorizo and anything else you happen to have. Add a load of sliced or grated cheese on top..... now this is the clever bit, put the frying pan lid on, and the steam melts the cheese. Voila - pizza done on a camping stove.

It's particularly effective when cooking for someone else. You offer them some pizza. "ooh, that'd be nice" then get the utterly baffled look when making the dough as they think "how tf is he going to cook that ?"