The Best Homemade Pizza
you'll ever eat
A bit of [hi]story
A popular contemporary legend holds that the archetypal pizza, pizza Margherita, was invented in 1889, when the Royal Palace of Capodimonte commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo (pizza maker) Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three different pizzas he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pizza swathed in the colors of the Italian flag — red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella). Supposedly, this kind of pizza was then named after the Queen. Pizza was brought to the United States with Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century and first appeared in areas where Italian immigrants concentrated. The country's first pizzeria, Lombardi's, opened in 1905. Following World War II, veterans returning from the Italian Campaign, who were introduced to Italy's native cuisine, proved a ready market for pizza in particular. Learn more here.
What you need :
👨👩👧👧 4 pizzas (12 inches in diameter) 👨👩👧👧
- ▫️ 600 ml of warm water;
- ▫️ 7 cups (1kg) flour, type "00";
- ▫️ 2.5-3 tablespoons (25grams) of fresh yeast;
- ▫️ 6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil;
- ▫️ 1.5 teaspoons salt;
- ▫️ 2 teaspoons sugar.
Tutorial:
How to make your best pizza :
- ➡️ Sprinkle the yeast into a medium bowl with the warm water. Stir until the yeast dissolves.
- ➡️ Place almost all of the flour on the table in the shape of a volcano.
- ➡️ Pour the yeast-and-warm-water mix, along with the other ingredients, into the “crater” of the volcano.
- ➡️ Knead everything together for 10 to 15 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic, keeping your surface floured.
- ➡️ Grease up a bowl with some olive oil and put the dough inside. Turn the dough around so the top is slightly oiled.
- ➡️ Cover the bowl and put the dough aside to let it rest for at least four or five hours.
- ➡️ Preheat the oven to about 400°F, or about 200°C.
- ➡️ Dump the dough out of the bowl and back onto the floured surface. Punch it down, getting rid of any bubbles.
- ➡️ Divide the dough in half and let it rest for a few minutes.
- ➡️ Roll each section into a 12-inch disc. Now’s your chance to decide how thick you want your pizza to be! Do you want it pizza alta (Neapolitan-style) or pizza bassa (Roman-style)?
- ➡️ Transfer the dough onto an oiled pizza pan or baking sheet.
- ➡️ Add tomato sauce, if you want a pizza rossa (red pizza). Lots of pizzas in Italy are actually pizza bianca, without tomato sauce, so don’t feel like you have to! Brush the edges of the crust with a little bit of olive oil.
- ➡️ Bake each pizza for about 10 minutes, then add mozzarella cheese on top, as well as any other ingredients.
- ➡️ Let the pizzas bake until the crust is browned and the cheese is melted. By lifting up the pizza to peek underneath, you can make sure the bottom has browned, too.
- ➡️ Remove your pizzas from the oven. Enjoy! 🍕
