Pizza!!! Pizza!!! Pizza!!!

  

I'm sure most of us have eaten pizza at least once in our lives. I remember eating pizza since I was a little girl.....and I absolutely love them. 

Though the deep pan pizza, the Chicago style, the one with the soft and buttery crust is yummy and filling....I personally like the thin crusted Italian style pizza. 

Pizza is typically yeasted flatbread. The modern pizza was invented in Naples, Italy, and the dish and its variants have since become popular and common in many areas of the world. Foods similar to pizza have been made since the neolithic age. Records of people adding other ingredients to bread to make it more flavorful can be found throughout ancient history. The ancient Greeks covered their bread with oils, herbs and cheese.

A popular contemporary legend holds that the classic pizza, pizza Margherita, was invented in 1889, when the Royal Palace of Capodimonte commissioned the Neapolitan pizza maker, Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three different pizzas he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pizza swathed in the colors of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella). Supposedly, this kind of pizza was then named after the Queen.

Pizza was brought to the United States with Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. The first known official pizzeria in the United States was supposedly opened by a grocer, Gennaro Lombari, in 1905 in New York City. It wasn’t until the early 1930s that he got around to putting tables and chairs in his establishment. But it was during the pop culture in the 1950s, that pizza became popular.

I've tried different kinds of pizza with various toppings. I've had it fresh from a pizzeria, I've bought the frozen one and reheated it in my oven and I've also ordered pizzas home. There are these ready to bake pizza bases available in the market and I've made pizzas adding toppings of my choice with the store bought tomato sauce and grated cheese. 

So you see.... I've had pizzas in almost every form available. 

But when I made a pizza from scratch - I mean from kneading the dough for the base and preparing the sauce....it was too good....and from then on there was no more store bought pizza bases in my house. 

Homemade pizza crust may sound difficult. But trust me – Making pizza crust is a lot like making regular bread, only quicker and well, flatter. 

Nothing beats freshly baked pizza. 

Mr. Peter loves it! Our kids love it! What more do I want....


So here's the recipe: 
This recipe is enough for one 14-inch pizza with a thin bottom crust and enough dough around the edge to munch on. 

Ingredients:
For the base:

3tsp active dry yeast
3 cups flour
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup lukewarm water
1 tbsp olive oil

For the sauce:
4-5 cloves of garlic - finely chopped
6-7 medium sized tomatoes - chopped
1/2 tsp sugar
Salt & Pepper - to taste
1 tsp dried basil ( 2-3 fresh basil leaves - chopped)
1 tbsp olive oil

For the toppings:
1 cup Mozzarella cheese - grated 
Roughly chopped/ sliced - Onions, tomatoes, black olives, mushrooms. 

Method:
For the base:
In a bowl, combine the yeast, sugar and warm water. Give it a stir and wait for the yeast to bloom, about 10-15 minutes. 
Stir in 1 cup flour and add the salt, and then stir in another cup of flour. 
Dump mixture on a kneading board and work in the last cup of flour, kneading until dough is soft and elastic, but not sticky. 
Else, add in more flour and knead more. Form dough into a ball. 
In another bowl, pour in 1 tbsp of olive oil and spread it around. 

Coat the ball of dough with oil and cover the bowl with a damp towel and let dough rise for 40 minutes. 
Punch down dough and knead on board for about 2 mins. Dough is now ready to spread on the pan. 

To avoid sticking of crust, apply a little bit of oil and then work dough to pan. 


For the sauce:
Heat pan and pour the olive oil. Add the garlic and sauté for a while. Add the tomatoes and cook well till they become very soft and mushy. 
Add the salt, sugar and pepper and mix well. Finally add the basil. The sauce is ready. Let it cool. 
This is nothing but the Marinara sauce.

Assembling & cooking the pizza:
Once the dough has been put on the pan, spread the sauce, add the toppings and finally top it up with the mozzarella cheese. 
Bake at 250°C for 10-12 minutes. 

La pizza è servita!!!

Buon appetito!!!

You can add any toppings on the pizza......bbq chicken, ham, sausage, pepperoni, capsicums, corn, pineapple or even jalapenos. 

Or even with no toppings....just the sauce and cheese.....it tastes absolutely yumm!!

The choices are endless.