My long journey in making Pizza from scratch was inspired by the below recipe from BuzzFeed. I watch it once every time I make pizza at home.
Here are my changes to above recipe:
a. For making the dough is I use 5 cups of all-purpose flour and 2 cups of bread flour
b. Another option is to use 00 flour from Italy instead of 5 cups of all-purpose flour. With this flour your pizza can be extremely thin with crust.
c. The 7 cups makes 4 large pizzas. You can cut the recipe into half to make 2 pizzas.
Making the pizza:
- Roll the crust on the pan
- Spread a thin layer of the sauce (tomato or basil pesto); Once you like basil pesto, you will never go back to tomato sauce!
- Sprinkle a little bit of mozzarella cheese
- Start layering your toppings; do not pile up too much of each topping. For a vegetarian pizza the toppings we use include
○ Finely chopped red onion
○ Cut bell pepper (any color)
○ Pineapple pieces (canned)
○ Green olives (canned) each cut into half
○ Tomatoes cut into small pieces. Alternate is slices.
○ Mushrooms sliced
- We add chopped pickled Jalapenos, crushed red pepper, chopped garlic. Also I add chopped fresh rosemary and oregano
- Sprinkle Italian seasoning (ours is from Costco) evenly on the top of the pizza
- Finally add 1-2 teaspoons of olive oil, sprinkled across the pizza on the top
Baking the pizza:
Every oven can cook differently. Here are the settings I use.
- Pre-heat to 400 degrees F
- Place your pizza in the oven and cook for 12 minutes
- Upon completion, turn on BROIL mode in high heat and cook for 3 minutes
- Remove your pizza IMMEDIATELY and cut into slices after a couple of minutes of cooling
Topping after cooking:
- Sometimes we would use tomato slices on top of each pizza slice
- Sprinkle fresh chopped basil on each slice
Enjoy your pizza
