Sunday, August 3, 2008

Yummy looking pizza dough recipe

I recently realized that Masa and I have never made pizza together. If we lived in Canada we would have made pizza several times but since home made pizza is not that common in Japan, I never think to make it. I stumbled across a great looking recipe on Choos & Chews.
The recipe was originally published in one of Jamie Oliver's (The Naked Chef) cookbooks.

Measure out 1 kg of strong white bread flour and 1 level tbsp sea salt onto your work surface. Mix 14g of dried yeast (I used 10g of instant yeast), 1 tablespoon of castor sugar and 4 tablespoons of olive oil in about 650ml of tepid water. There is no need to let the mixture stand if you use instant yeast.

Make a well in the centre of the flour and trickle in the liquid. Using a fork, draw the flour in towards the liquid. When all the liquid has been incorporated into the flour, knead until you have a soft, smooth and springy dough. Roll the dough into a ball. sprinkle some flour on top. This recipe yields about 6-8 medium-sized pizzas.

Place the dough in a warm place to rise until it has doubled. This should take about an hour. Once the dough has risen, knock it back, that is, gently knead it so you push out some of the air.

Divide the dough into 6-8 portions, and you can either freeze your portions, put them into the fridge for later, or use the dough immediately. It's best to roll the pizzas out about 15 minutes before you intend to cook them.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll each portion of dough out as thin as you can. I didn't attempt a toss, but I did manipulate the flattened dough from palm to palm until they thinned out further. Play with your favourite topping (less is more!), drizzle on some good olive oil, a bit of sea salt if necessary, and freshly ground black pepper.

I topped one pizza with some blanched asparagus, lots of mozzarella, some asiago, oregano, black pepper, salt and a drizzle of olive oil. I baked the pizza at 220C for about 10 minutes.

I'm very excited to try this sometime this week. Then I'll have pizza dough ready for a variety of uses.

3 comments:

Dee said...

Can't wait to find out if this works for you :)

pam said...

I cheat and make my pizza dough in my bread machine!

Kirsty Girl said...

Thanks Dee!

Pam - I wish I had a bread machine to cheat with.