Serves: Makes ~3-4 large pizzas, suitable for 2 people (~6-8 people)
Approx cost: ~€5, depending on toppings
Approx calories (per slice): ~360
Approx preparation and cooking time: 150 mins
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8A0808;”] N ow who doesn’t love a good pizza? Crisp bread base, rich tomto sauce, stringy, hot, delicious cheese and about any toppings you could possibly ever desire! While Italians everywhere are probably heaving a deep, heavy sigh at this, I do enjoy trying “localised” versions of pizzas. In Sweden the “kebab pizza” is very common – pretty much a margherita pizza topped with lettuce, kebab meat, onions and chillies and kebab sauce, served with a healthy pile of tart, refreshing Pizza Salad (please excuse the horrifically bad photos!). In Japan they seem to go in for potato, sweetcorn and seafood on their pizza while in France they seem to love Crème Fraiche on their pizzas. Dominos makes a pretty darn good called a “Savoyard”. Cream cheese instead of tomato on the base, mozzarella and reblochon cheese, lardons and potatoes. Not for everyone but it’s pretty enjoyable if you pretend it’s not supposed to be a “pizza”. They seem rather similar to the Tarte Flambée in fact:
Tarte flambée is an Alsatian dish composed of bread dough rolled out very thin in the shape of a rectangle (traditionally) or circle, which is covered with fromage blanc or crème fraîche, thinly sliced onions and lardons. It is one of the most famous gastronomical specialties of the region.
In any case, I’ve had a pizza stone sitting in my cupboard for some months – a gift from a friend – and I thought it was really high time I started using it so here we go. A post all about pizza! I thought I’d do it in multiple sections – the base first, then the sauce, and finally the pizza construction itself, because different sections may be useful to different people. Additionally – some words of advice in using the pizza stone – make sure you read how to handle/prepare it properly. You will always need to put it into the oven from cold, and heat it up with the oven. I also recommend getting a short handled peel because you seriously won’t want to be messing around with a billion degree piece of rock in your oven once it’s hot. Lastly, try and get some coarse ground flour – I used fine ground semolina flour. Even though it’s “fine ground” it’s still much coarser than regular flour and is perfect for dusting the board with when rolling out the dough. It provides the perfect surface for optimum “pick up” of the uncooked pizza from the surface using the peel. Click the sections below to see the various steps and photos! Have a good Thursday everyone 🙂
[learn_more caption=”Part 1: The Pizza Dough”]
Pizza Dough Ingredients
- 600g Plain Flour
- 330ml warm Water
- 1.5 tsps dried Yeast
- 3 tbsps Olive Oil
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Sugar
- 1 handful of semolina flour or similar coarse flour for dusting
Pizza Dough Instructions
- Start by mixing 100ml of the warm water with the yeast and sugar. Mix well and set aside for about 15 minutes until the yeast has started to bubble and froth.
- Mix 1tbsp of the olive oil with the plain flour and salt and then pour in the yeast mixture and the rest of the warm water. Mix well until the mixture forms a dough. You may need to add a little more flour or water if the dough is too dry or sticky. Once it is manageable, turn out onto a floured surface and knead well for about 5 minutes.
- Return the dough to the bowl and pour over the remaining 2 tbsps of Olive Oil. Cover with a clean cloth and allow to rise in a warm place for about 1 to 2 hours.
- Normally, while the dough is rising you need to prepare your tomato sauce and toppings. If you have these all ready now then you just need to take the risen dough and punch out the air from the centre. Divide into 3 pieces and place one piece on a large surface dusted well with coarse flour, such as semolina flour. Form into a rough circle shape and then roll out using a rolling pin. If you have awesome ninja skills you can do the whole “fling the dough around your head” thing, but for the ordinary layman, I think a rolling pin will suffice 🙂 Once the dough is about 4 or 5mm thick you can start laying on your toppings.
[learn_more caption=”Part 2: The Pizza Sauce”]
Pizza Sauce Ingredients
- 5 or 6 San Marzano tomatoes, or if unavailable, 1 can of San Marzano tomatoes. Worst case scenario – 1 can of tomatoes :p
- 3 cloves of Garlic
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 heaped tbsp of Tomato concentrate
- 1 handful of fresh Basil
- 2 tsps Sugar
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Black Pepper
Pizza Sauce Instructions
- Peel and mince the garlic finely. Heat the oil in a large pan and gently fry the garlic. Don’t allow it to get caramelised or crispy. Meanwhile, chop the tomatoes finely, if using fresh tomatoes. Transfer the tomatoes (or the tin of) into the pan with the garlic and stir in the tomato concentrate, sugar, salt and black pepper. Chop the basil finely and add this in. Simmer the sauce gently for about 30 to 40 minutes, stirring regularly, to ensure it doesn’t burn or stick. After this time the sauce should have reduced in volume by about 50% and be much more rich and thick. Allow to cool before transferring to the dough.
[learn_more caption=”Part 3: Building The Pizza”]
Pizza Composition Ingredients
Anything you want… but, if you want to make one of my beloved “French specialty” pizzas with crème fraiche and so forth…:
- 1 Potato, boiled and sliced
- 3 tbsps Crème Fraiche
- 1 handful of Lardons
- 1 handful of capers
- Mozarella Cheese, grated
Pizza Composition Instructions
- At least one hour before making the pizzas, place the pizza stone into the oven and turn the oven on between 220 and 250 degrees Celsius. Experiment with different temperatures depending on your oven. Never put your pizza stone into a hot oven, and make sure you heat it for at least one hour before baking on it.
- Some people like to ransack the cupboards as they go along. I like to set it all up so it looks like a pizzeria kitchen while I’m working 🙂 Transfer some of the pizza sauce to the rolled out dough and spread out so the base is covered – not too thickly – with sauce, leaving 1cm or so at the edge as the crust. Sprinkly the base liberally with cheese before adding on the potato slices and lardons. Arrange the 3 tbsps of Crème Fraiche in 4 or 5 heaps on the toppings and then sprinkle on capers. Carefully, but firmly, shove the peel under the pizza dough. If you’re using the right, coarse flour this will be quite easy. You may need to shove it under half way, gently drag the pizza back and shove it under the rest of the way, to prevent the whole thing from sliding onto the floor! Transfer to the baking stone. Rest the peel near the back of the stone and gently tilt and pull away the peel firmly. Bake for about 10 minutes, depending on the oven. Start watching it from about the 6 or 7 minutes and remove when it’s starting to look crispy and delicious! Enjoy!
Sissi says
Your pizza looks fantastic. I also feel very free at home to put as many and as different toppings as I want. The only thing I never put is mozzarella though. I always love to see different pizza recipes. Everyone does it in a slightly different way, even the crust!
I see you have become very French, adding cream to the pizza 😉 The French add cream to everything (this is how you check a real Italian restaurant in France or anywhere: if they put cream in pasta alla carbonara, look elsewhere…).
Wait, or maybe in Northern Italy people also add cream to pizza???
I am very difficult with the crust. This is why I make pizza at home very rarely. My crust is awful in comparison with the one from my favourite Italian pizzeria… We agree my pizza is not really in the same category as a pizzeria pizza and should never be compared.
The Alsatian tart is probably the famous "flammenkuche". I really like it, but the crust is a bit different from pizza; I must say I still prefer pizza 🙂
I have never used the pizza stone. have you ever made pizza without it? What is the difference? (Most of all in taste and texture?)
Charles says
Thanks Sissi – how come you never put mozzarella? I find it the perfect cheese for pizza… so soft and stringy, although I like other cheeses too for a bit of flavour. The crust of flammenküche is indeed a bit different… much more "short" I think… like a cross between bread and pastry, but it's really delicious all the same, I agree. I have made pizza many times without a stone and I have to say that I will never do it without a stone again! Even using a special "pizza tin" with holes in the bottom, the base ends up being soft and uncooked. Pizza stones really produce wonderful results. Perfectly baked, thin, crispy crusts… and you can use them for regular bread too. I would really recommend buying one – you won't regret it!
Sissi says
Charles, thank you for your answer. I will buy a pizza stone then!
I use smoked provola (check my pizza post: http://www.withaglass.com/?p=4968, of course the crust is 100x worse than yours…). For me mozzarella is too bland and tasteless and buffala tastes weird when hot… You should try smoked provola one day! It has a similar consistency, but lost of taste. According to many sources at least 40% of Naples pizzerias use it 😉
You are right! Flammenkuche is for me also somewhere between bread and pizza!
PS I have bottled my black currant vodka yesterday. I wanted to finish the whole lot in one night. It was hard to resist. I have no words to describe it. It's breathtaking. I will make more with frozen black currants if this one is finished too quickly 🙂
What about your cherry brandy?
A_Boleyn says
I was intrigued by the smoked provola you mentioned but the closest I could find at my cheese vendor's was smoked provolone. With pizza recipes on this site, yours and Rufus' recently I got a lot of inspiration so I now have soft goat cheese, smoked provolone and proscuitto in the fridge and fresh oregano, basil and rosemary in the garden to play with. The possibilities are endless on this rainy day.
Charles says
Mmm, Sounds too good – makes me want to get some smoked provolone myself!
A_Boleyn says
I know I have tasted goat cheese in the past but, inspired by the pizza posts, I visited my cheese monger at the city market this past Saturday and tasted a hard version of goat cheese so I'd know what it tasted like (reminded me of gruyere cheese) and bought some of the soft kind … I'll have to ask for names next time.
Last night I made 2 pizzas: one a traditional kind with tomato sauce, ham sausage and mozzarella while the other was brushed with a mixture of fresh oregano, basil and rosemary steeped in extra virgin olive oil and garlic powder, grated romano cheese, strips of smoked provolone and blobs of the goat cheese with thinly sliced prosciutto draped over the top. My mom usually only has one piece but she had 3 of this thin crust version. Her home care worker who came in just as I had served my mom, although she had spent the day being fed by her various clients, still managed one piece while I had the other 4 slices.
I'll have to make more soon. Do you know how perishable soft goat cheese is?
Most of the 2nd (traditional) thick crust pizza is destined for work lunches.
Charles says
Hi A_Boleyn, I'm going to reply here to your comment below – I had nested comments turned on to 10 comments deep – nice to know now how many comments it required to "break" the formatting of the theme, hehe. I've corrected it now and it's pushed your previous comment back up a level 🙂 Your pizzas sound awesome – doesn't help that I'm so hungry right now but wow – goats cheese, provolone… so good 😀
Regarding Goat's Cheese – it lasts a pretty long time. It starts to age and go a bit yellow after some time but even then it's still fine to eat as long as you don't mind the slightly funkier taste. I'll eat cheese like that right up until the stage where it starts growing fluff on top 😀 I'd say it will be good for at minimum 1 week though, probably more depending on how it's kept!
Charles says
Ooh, I'm sorry Sissi – I forgot to reply – the blackcurrant vodka sounds so good – my brandy coming along well. Such a delicious cherry flavour, though I need to do a proper test some time to see if it is too sweet. There are still many months until Christmas so I want to ensure it is not too sweet or syrupy until then!
Kristy says
Oh Charles! I'll tell you what, this is some really darn good looking pizza!!! And I was all set to eat healthy this weekend. Now I have a craving for pizza again. 🙂 LOL. Actually, I always have a craving for pizza. Your dough looks fantastic and I love the way you set up the post with the different drop downs. Very cool picture of all of the pizza construction ingredients too. My kids would totally dig that last pizza you made too. 🙂
Charles says
Thanks Kristy! The dough wasn't bad… it was my most successful ever pizza dough, for sure, but I think that maybe had something to do with the pizza stone 😀 I think I'll be like many other people – once you get the "pizza bug" you just want to keep trying to perfect the dough recipe. My friend made one a while back which he posted about and said it was fantastic – I'll try and dig it up if his blog is still active and make that one next time!
Kelly says
Charles, wow, no kidding you ignore your guests when they come for dinner (ha-ha!).
What a detailed, well-illustrated post (love the individual parts – very fancy!). My pizza stone isn't quite as deluxe as yours but boy, do we love it. As you say, you're into the world of infinite possibilities when it comes to pizza and it makes for such an fun, entertaining evening. We use cornmeal for sliding and I have to say it works beautifully (and we also like the residual taste/texture of the grainy cornmeal).
Charles says
Hi Kelly 🙂 I was pretty surprised at how easy the pizzas slid on and off the peel. I was expecting a disaster – smooshed up dough, toppings all over the floor, but it went flawlessly (even if I do say so myself :p). Going to get some real nice, fresh seafood and make one with that next time! 🙂
Eva says
The pizza looks awesome, Charles. One of my favourite group of toppings is a béchamel and onion confit, Serrano ham and fresh mozzarella! Mmmmmm. But I also love a Margharita!
Charles says
Thanks Eva! That pizza you described – yummy, that sounds really good… especially the béchamel and onion confit! There's a pizza place near me called Speed Rabbit (lol) which does rather interesting pizzas. You can see their menu here, although it's in French. They have toppings like ground beef, pickles and dijon mustard which I find rather funny 😀
A_Boleyn says
Some mighty fine looking pizzas there, pardner! 🙂
Charles says
Thanks! Although I think I'm all pizza'd out for the next few weeks… "tooooo much cheeeeeeeese" 😀
Pure Complex says
I absolutely love the pizza. And I love the potato included in this dish as well. Ahh.. now I'm even more hungry than I already am :). I'm like Kristy, pizza always calls me to make it lol. And I never heard of cream included in a pizza recipe but I have to say I like it
Charles says
It's definitely an acquired taste I think – most people claim to hate it, but I secretly think that's only because they never tried it 😀 Sure, it's not really a traditional "pizza", but that's like saying a sandwich can't have cheese inside! Food evolves… so should we 🙂
Marianna says
Your pizza looks great! I made a pizza too lately, can't say that the dough was tasty – i'm really terrible at any sort of baking. But I used the bolognese sauce from lasagna and some random set of ham and sausages – was ok )
Charles says
I find the most important part in the dough is actually making something bread-like. Many people seem to think that some sort of flour and water concoction on its own will be sufficient. Then they wonder why 50% of their teeth just broke in half while crunching down on a slab of solid baked dough-rock 😀 Pasta-less lasagna pizza… sounds good to me 🙂
A_Boleyn says
Your pizza dough tutorial was excellent. Our dough recipes are pretty similar (I measure my flour rather than weighing it which has worked for me for the last 30 yrs and I use a bit more yeast) but I think the real secret is kneading it enough. The pizza stone is a lovely luxury but really not necessary. 🙂
Charles says
Thank you! I might try a bit more yeast next time – As long as the dough is handled well and the yeast is allowed to "perform" adequately it won't affect the taste. You can absolutely get good results without a pizza stone, but it's difficult to achieve that really crispy, stone-baked bottom without it. With a combination of pizza tin and baking direct on the rack to crisp off at the end you can get it quite crispy, but not with the same level of … hmm, "compactness" I guess… it's hard to describe, sorry :/
A_Boleyn says
Most pizza recipes seem based on using about 3 – 3 1/4 cups of flour and a packet (2 1/4 tsp) of commercial (Fleischmann) dry yeast which allows adequate rising (doubling) after about 1 hr – 1 1/2 hrs at room temperature. That's what I go by when I buy the small jars of granulated yeast and measure my own.
As to baking sheets etc, I have 2 cheap old metal sheets (one round, one rectangular) inherited from my mom and used for as long as I have been making pizzas for the family (>30 yrs). They're black but I have no idea what colour they started as. I just sprinkle some cornmeal over the top and lay my dough in and after 15 min at 350 deg F on the 2nd shelf from the bottom in my 4 shelf oven, I have a crispy, golden brown crust on the underside. Even thick crust pizzas get brown and crispy on the underside.
Greg says
Now that's a pizza stone. Those pepperoni are calling my name, and I'm more a veggie pizza guy. I love this post, the presentation's great. Love all the pictures.
Charles says
Cheers Greg 🙂 I actually love veggie pizzas myself – I'll often get just plain veg when ordering out, although I do love me a lone type of sausage – chorizo, pepperoni, or something like this on top 🙂 Thanks for the kind comments 🙂
ping says
Gosh, all that talk about how good a pizza stone is really makes me want to go out and get one. I wouldn't know where to find them tho. I don't think I've ever seen any on sale here. Coincidently, I had homemade pizza for lunch today and saw this post AFTER I'd made it. Not that it wasn't good, I just thought the base could have been better. Like you said, maybe it's the stone. Oh, and I didn't know ninjas do the whirl the dough over the head thing? 😀 That's a funny image in my head.
Your pizza looks fantastic!
Charles says
Hi Ping – have you never seen italian chefs in restaurants spinning the dough around in the air? I admit I tried it just to see how hard it is. Well – let's just say there was a lot of flour around the floor and my dough had a big hole in the middle from my finger :p
For pizza stones – they weight a *lot*, but you could probably order them from Amazon. Alternatively, you could go to any "hardware" style store and buy an unlacquered floor tile or fire brick – It's basically a fire-brick, just a bit bigger and heavier.
Sadhana says
Love home made pizza topped with veggies and the pizza sauce recipe you had posted seems to be a keeper. Got to try it.
Charles says
Thanks Sadhana – it was very good – the key is to boil it down for long enough so it's not too liquid! Let me know if you give it a try 🙂
Melissa Placzek says
Your pizza looks great! One question though…have you ever tried grilling your pizza? We started the summer before last and have never had better pizza. Ever. It seems a little overwhelming until you get the hang of it. A couple trys and you'll be a pro. I think it would be fun to make these with guests…you could have the dough prepared in advance…hang out by the grill with a good bottle of vino… 🙂 If you want to try it check out the post on my blog called "grilled pizza."
I love weird pizza toppings too! Thai chicken with peanut sauce is my favorite so far…also on my blog 🙂
~M
Charles says
I never tried grilling the pizza, though just to clarify something – by grilling you mean like in a ridged grill pan or barbeque right? When I think of "grilling" I often think of applying heat from above (which I think you call broiling in the US). Not sure how grilling the pizza would work but I'd be game to give it a try. Only problem is finding a place suitable to do it. Apartment life isn't well suited to setting up barbeques alas 🙁 Will check out your post to see your mystical grilled pizza 😀
Melissa Placzek says
Hello there 🙂
Oh, I meant a charcoal grill not broiling 🙂 If you get the chance to make it, I think You'll really like it.