How to Make a Pizza Pie

Oven

The perfect home made pizza can be an elusive thing. The fact is that the domestic oven is simply not hot enough to do pizza properly. If you're like me, you have rejected the supermarket fresh and frozen pizza; not fresh enough, I say. A frozen pizza can't cook evenly, nor quickly enough, and the one from the chilled cabinet can be inadequate in a variety of different ways.

A fresh pizza, freshly made, with fresh ingredients, is what you want. And not the greasy, homogenised fodder served up by the chains or by the local kebab vendor. That stuff is junk, and deservedly lumped in with other kinds of junk food.

Your ultimate ambition should be to build a small pizza oven, a brick chimney insulated with sand, with an opening sufficient to cook pizza au feu de bois directly on the oven floor.

In the meantime, the best you can do is get yourself a stone. Forget metal trays, even round ones with little holes drilled in them. The holes are trying to cure the problem of the undercooked crust, which is somewhat alleviated by a stone. What a pizza wants is direct contact with the source of heat. You heat the stone in the oven while you are preparing your pizza dough etc. Start by warming it gently (as you set the dough to rise), and then heat it up as hot as your oven will go. Your kitchen should get uncomfortably hot during the pizza making process, which is why you want a proper oven in the back garden.

Dough

I always make enough dough for 3 pizzas; but the 3rd is guaranteed not to be as good as the first two, because opening the oven as many times as you do will cause too much heat to escape - it will take too long to cook, and the crust will get black.

I use about 1lb, 500g, of strong white bread flour. Sometimes I cut this with Italian 00 flour (do a 50/50 mix). Use fresh yeast if you can get it, and if you're prepared for the speed at which it will work. Otherwise, keep a few sachets of dried yeast in the cupboard and start early.

I mix my dough in a food processor, because life is too short to do things manually. But use the plastic blade if you have one, because cold metal and bread dough is not a good combo.

Add the flour to the processor, with salt to taste (I use about a dessert spoonful), a sachet of dried yeast (or half an ounce if using fresh, mixed to a liquid state with a small amount of sugar, if you want). Start the processor going and add a couple of dashes of olive oil. I don't measure this so you're on your own, probably a couple of tablespoons.

Then add a 50/50 mix of warm milk and water, about half a pint. Run the processor until the dough is formed, flexible and soft, yet not sticking to the sides of the bowl. Run it for a couple of minutes once it comes clean away from the bowl sides, to ensure it's thoroughly mixed.

Then leave the dough in a warm place. If you're already heating your stone in the oven, your kitchen is probably going to be warm enough. It'll take about an hour to rise, or half that time with fresh yeast.

When it has risen, tip the dough onto a floured surface and knock it back, knead till all air pockets are removed, then divide into thirds and knead each piece some more. Leave for a few minutes if you have the time.

I then use a wooden rolling pin to roll out the first circle of dough, big enough and thin enough to fit on the stone, which I set upon a wooden peel. I don't do deep dish or any of that rubbish. To ensure that the base doesn't stick to the peel, I rub the peel with a mixture of flour and cornmeal (not much), so it has a slippery surface. It will need another 10 minutes or so to rise a little (just so that some air pockets appear within its texture), which gives you time, not to have a Mars, but to prepare the toppings.

Topping

It's up to you, but I start with either tomato sauce or creme fraiche. I use half fat creme fraiche these days, but obviously things go considerably better with the full fat version.

But let's start with tomato sauce. You want it to be thick and rich, so you can get away with using as little as possible. Not a tin of chopped tomatoes, not passata, but something along the lines of a jar of pasta sauce, a fairly bog-standard one. You can either buy pizza topping in jars, and this doesn't hurt, though they tend to be over priced. Or you can make your own, with onions fried in olive oil, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, basil, and a good deal of time to allow the sauce to thicken and reduce.

Buy a jar.

Per pizza, the most sauce you want to use is about 3 tablespoons. Spoon it onto the now-risen dough, and spread it thinly.

Next apply the cheese. Cheese should not be the last topping. It needs to react with the tomato sauce. I use either the hard (Danish) kind of mozzarella, which I grate, or the proper kind that comes in bags with liquid, which I dry thoroughly using kitchen towel and slice thinly. About 100g of the hard cheese per pizza is enough, though you can get away with 1/3 of a 200g block; or two bags of proper mozza between 3 pizzas. You don't need to completely cover the base: just use enough cheese so that when it is melted everybody gets some. Remember, cheese is the worst part of a pizza in terms of saturated fats and calories, so use it wisely. Don't create a pool of melted grease, but use the cheese as it is meant to be, as one of a variety of pizza toppings.

What else? The rest will be up to you, but if you're doing for friends, it helps to offer a variety of toppings. Use thinly sliced red onions (sparingly), pineapple pieces, black olives, thinly sliced or finely chopped red and green peppers, frankfurters, smoked sausage, chopped ham ends from the deli counter, pre-cooked lardons (bacon bits), pepperoni, capers, anchovies, shrimp, sweetcorn. Personally I shy away from tuna, minced beef, sausage meat, turkey, chicken, baked beans, spaghetti, and other horrors of student pizzas. Toppings you might be surprised to learn that I always avoid are fresh tomatoes and mushrooms, because they both release too much liquid onto the top and prevent the crust from cooking properly.

Don't go overboard with the toppings. Slice fine and use sparingly. It's not an excuse just to eat a load of meat, but a whole dish in itself, so go for texture and colour, with a different taste sensation in every bit.

Top each pizza differently, ham and pineapple with green pepper here; red pepper, sweetcorn, and lardons there.

Using the creme fraiche instead of tomato sauce, you can avoid cheese altogether and do the classic Alsatian Tarte Flambee, using sliced onion and lardons. You can even use something like Gruyere cheese instead of mozzarella, and throw small pieces of cooked potato into the mix.

I like to do a hybrid, with a creme fraiche base, a little mozzarella, red onions, lardons, green pepper, and pineapple. It looks very colourful and tastes delicious.

Another wrinkle you could try would be to mix equal parts tomato puree with creme fraiche for your base. In Alsace, you'll also see a variation whereby slices of apple are placed on the creme fraiche and cooked in the same way. Then you pour on a little Calvados and set it alight.

Once the topping is on, you need to work quickly so that the oven is not open for long. Make sure the pizza is loose on the peel by shaking it gently, then quickly open the oven door and slide it off the peel onto the stone in the oven. Close the oven door and cook for about 10 minutes.

You may need one or two minutes extra at the end, to make sure all the cheese is bubbling and golden, and (you hope) the crust cooked all the way through. Again, speed is of the essence. Get the pizza off the stone and onto the peel as quickly as possible. Slice it with a wheel, and put it onto a serving plate. Then quickly roll out your next ball of dough (without kneading it again - the smaller air pockets will be retained) and get the next one in the oven.

Your pizzas should emerge with a dry, crispy, crust. You should be able to see the fine air pockets within each slice of the base, and the colour should be flour white. If it is grey and soggy and seems undercooked, it was either not adequately risen, or the oven not hot enough.

It can take years to learn to do it properly, and of course it takes a lifetime to master. But the first time you make a good pizza, it will be better than those from the supermarket, and better than the crap you can get delivered at home.

When eating pizza in a proper pizzeria, endeavour not to be too early, because it will take the restaurant time to get its oven hot enough. Being the first customer of the night will lead to disappointment. Always choose a pizzeria that is already crowded with customers.