Since my last pizza post, I’ve made Nutella Pizza, a calzone and a cheese-stuffed crust pizza. Also, I have attempted frying pizzas! Fried pizza dough (by itself) is actually quite delicious, especially when you’ve got a butter-based curry sauce to dip in — it’s almost like a lazily adapted nan bread! Pizza making is actually a fun way to use your edible left-overs or odd bits of groceries that aren’t enough to make a meal.
If you are looking for a dough recipe, you can find it here. I love making pizzas. It’s one of my favourite ways to meditate — a ‘zen moment’ during the dough making process. The pizza crust was stuffed with mozzarella cheese. Sauce: Pesto and Pizza sauce. Toppings: Chicken chorizo sausage, mushrooms, German Salami, Peppers, German Butter Cheese.
Who’d have known that pesto is awesome on pizzas?
The secrets? Brushing your pizza with a tiny bit of olive oil prevents it from burning. 1 cup semola flour and 2 cups of all purpose flour has been my standard flour mixture. I always make a bit more of the liquid yeast/olive oil mixture in case the pizza is dry. In this pizza, I used a bit of bread flour to dust my work surface; adding as I needed more flour. Dropping the ball of dough from above my head, letting it land on the work surface, helps aerate the dough. I had wanted a dough that was of a thin bread texture, so that you could dig your teeth into the stuffed cheese crust with ease — without being too crispy.
Don’t have time to make pizzas from scratch every night? No problem. You can make as many dough balls in advance as you like and freeze them. In fact, I find that the dough is easier to work with once thawed over-night in the fridge. When it comes to pizza making, follow your heart and have a feel for your dough — forget the recipe once you know how to work with the key ingredients. Ah, that’s meditative cooking in a nutshell.
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