hey Eli, can you give us a recipe of a typical home made Italian pizza dough? i'm planing to finally make my dream pizza.
dough > tomato sauce > mozzarella > smoked Ham > Parmigiano > bacon > gorgonzola > pepperoni > oregano
Hey Vikkie!
Sorry so much for the late in replying, I wasn't around in the past days but now I'm back.
And hm, I must say I read Mick's answer and I think he gave you a good help too, to be honest.
But here's my contribution, the way I do it when I want it.
Ingredients for 4 pizzas:
- 600 ml of water.
- 1 kg of flour, + the small amounts you need eventually (you'll see what I mean).
- 50 gr of dried yeast or brewer's yeast.
- more or less 6 spoons of oil (better if extra virgin olive oil).
- till 20 grams of salt.
- 2 not full spoons of sugar.
To begin preparing the pizza dough, you put the flour on a pastry board (or a pretty big bowl) and make a hole in the center of the flour, like a volcano or something like that, to give ya an idea.
Get a glass bowl and pour in it: a glass of slightly warm water, a tiny bit (not much) of sugar, then crumble in the cubes of dried yeast or brewer's yeast and stir everything accurately; then, add that in the hole you made in the flour before.
In another glass with warm water, dissolve 20 grams of salt; add that to the flour too, adding the oil right after and... NOW COMES THE FUN, BABY! This is the most important part, because the secret to a good pizza, is the dough itself, not the toppings only.
Now keep on using the fork for this first knead phase, knead the small amount of flour that got wet by the ingredients you just added, and go on kneading letting the wetness spread and "touch" the whole flour quantity, and eventually add some little warm water to let the flour "make bond" and be ok to be manipulated... now you can start kneading with your hand, this is important, use the hands and knead till the dough get the right consistency (soft and elastic).
When the dough is ready, there's a trick: try to beat it a bit, and not gently much... how? (I should make a vid of this, it's pretty hard to explain with words only and I'm not able to talk and say useless things...) You grab the dough and stretch it a little bit (by lettin' it roll on the pastry board few seconds), then grab it and beat one of its extremity on the pastry board, almost as if it was a whip; beat this way both extremities for at least two or three times, then stop and gently let the dough get back to its former shape and make a ball out of it... you're going to lay that ball in a large bowl (large because that the dough will double in volume), well dusted with flour on the bottom. Add some small "dust" of flour on top of the dough, and now cover the bowl with a clean cloth and store in a warm place away from drafts.
Wait until the dough has doubled in size (it can take from about 1 hour till 1 hour and 1/2) and then proceed to draw up the dough in the baking tin.
And before spreading the dough in the tins, put a small amount of oil on the bottom. After doing that and puttin' the dough in the tins, add your favourite toppings... first tomato sauce, then origano and then the other toppings you like, at last a small and quick bit of oil (very small). Oh, remember that if you're gonna use ham, it's better to add it after the pizza cooked for a while, and same goes with the mozzarella and cheeses in general: add some more of it after the pizza cooked for a while... that way, they'll be less dry.
Here's a pic of how it turns out when we make it. I took this long ago, but that's not the point.
(I know, looks like there's no plate, but there is, I swear... the pizza was just really big...)
And sorry for writing too much... but since today, I got classified as not normal anymore, so that means I'm crazy and do weird things... and in this case, please forgive me... crazy people have no fault for their mind insanity, do they...
Well, hope I forgot nothing in the recipe... and hope you're going to have a good time making the pizza, Vikkie.
Sorry for not being able to do more.