Homemade Pizza

Pizza is 100% one of my favourite foods on the entire planet. I know they are definitely one of the unhealthiest too but I can't get enough of it. Whether it be a beautiful thin crust at a fancy Italian restaurant or a classic Domino's order, I love it all. I think one of the best things about pizza is that you can customize it and make it your own - you can literally put whatever you want on it. Saying that, I'm a very fussy eater - one of my traits I completely despise. Therefore, when choosing a pizza, I will always have a classic Margarita with seasoned chicken on top. Making my own pizza from scratch, from dough to final product, has always been on my bucket list. Without further ado, before I bombard you with 18th birthday posts,  here is the recipe my boyfriend and I followed to make our very own pizza! 

Ingredients

BASE:

300g Strong White Bread Flour

200ml Warm Water

1tsp Yeast (we bought the satchets because they apparently work best)

1tsp Salt

1tbsp Villa Blanca Olive Oil

SAUCE AND TOPPINGS:

Basilico Tomato & Basil Sauce 

Galbani Mozzarella Maxi

Chicken Slice (for me)

Mixed Herbs

Milano Salami (for Aidan)

Sweetcorn (for Aidan)

THE BASE

We knew we wanted to make our pizzas from scratch, as some people simply go out, buy a base and just add their own toppings. We wanted to do the whole sha-bang! As many know, the dough is the hardest part to perfect on your pizza - I definitely found it tricky to gage the correct thickness of my base. To begin, we boiled some water and left to cool until warm. Meanwhile, we mixed the bread flour, salt and yeast. After the water reached lukewarm, we created a small well in the mixture and poured both the oil and water into the bowl. Following this, we stirred thoroughly with a wooden spoon, making sure the mixture was even and damp. 

THE MESSY PART

I didn't quite realise how much flour you needed to place on a surface. The recipe we followed guided us to lightly flour a clean kitchen top; however, after doing so, we found the dough getting completely stuck and difficult to work with. Therefore, we carefully removed our creation and launched about half a bag of flour (slight exaggeration), to ensure the dough wouldn't stick again. This is where the fun begins! Knead your dough, with hands, for roughly 5-10 minutes until you are happy with your consistency. Cover the dough in a bowl to avoid over-rising, unless you wish for a thicker crust, whilst you create your tomato pissata sauce. We opted for a ready made sauce that tickled our fancy so we skipped this stage and went straight to rolling the dough...Use a rolling pin to choose your size and thicken of your base. We both went for a circular shape, mine being slightly thicker and smaller than Aidan's so it could fit into a frying pan. I wanted mine to be perfectly round because I'm fussy and all about the aesthetics... 

ADDING THE TOPPINGS

With regards to sauce, I only spread a thin layer on my pizza, whereas Aidan went in heavy handed and spread a lot. We have the complete opposite pizza prefence - I'm all about more cheese whereas he is a fan of a heavy tomato-ey base! This is one of my favourite things about making something from scratch - you can literally make it to your desire. Following, we sliced our (very strange) mozzarella and scattered over our tomato base. I then made sure to add tonnes of chicken, as it is my favourite pizza topping (boring I know) and seasoned it with mixed herbs. Aidan added pepperoni slices, chicken pieces and sweetcorn to his.

BAKING AND RESULT

Make sure the oven is heated to gas mark 8, or 240 degrees celcius. Bake pizza for 8-10 minutes until crisp. We slightly left ours for longer so my crust was crisper, yum! Voila...our pizzas were done. Overall, I was very impressed with how mine turned out. The only downfall I would say is that I made my base slightly too thick, probably because I confined all of my dough into a small frying pan. Talking taste, it was absolutely delicious. I am proud to say that it was my first pizza and I would give it a solid 9/10 for overall taste and finishing result.

The recipe we used was from BBC Good Food - we adjusted specific things to match our preferences but the basis of our ideas came down to this if you wish to follow it :)

Have you ever made your own pizza before? What are your favourite toppings?

Lots of love