Pizza!

Let's see how to make a proper italian pizza right at home. Spread the word around!




PART 1 - The pastry


What you need is an oven, and a little kneading machine / pastry mixer (whatever you call it. Otherwise you have to knead by hand, very hard!), and the ingredients.



These are for 3 persons: they fit more or less 2 medium sized tins
500 gr of Flour
300 gr of water
1 cube of yeast
20 gr of extravirgin olive oil
10 gr of salt
10 gr of sugar (not compulsory)


You can increase these quantities in proportion.


As the leavening takes some hours, you should start mixing the ingredients at least 2 hours before you start preparing it. But 4-5 hours is better.
If you plan to make a pizza for dinner, you'd better start in the morning.

Now step by step:

Put some of the 300 gr water in a separate glass and melt the yeast in it

Put it, together with sugar (if any), oil, flour, salt and the rest of the water, in the mixer.

Mix until you get an homogeneous pastry.
It must be quite elastic; if it's too hard, it needs more water, if it's too soft, it needs more flour.

With the exact recipe you shouldn't go wrong, but only with experience you'll learn to judge correctly.

Keep salt away from yeast, in either way.
Like: add water, sugar, then a part of flour, and after a mix add salt, and the rest of flour.
It spoils the yeast otherwise.


When you've finished, put it in a container like a deep tin or a pot with a round bottom.
Cover it with a cloth and put it in a "safe" place.
Don't leave open windows, as air blows may kill the yeast. I usually put it in the oven turned off.


Leave it to rest for a few hours.

If you've left it from the morning, you can knead it a bit in mid-afternoon.
Put some flour on your hands and reshape it. The leavened pastry will deflate when you touch it, but don't worry, it'll leaven again and be softer!






PART 2 - Shaping


In the evening, divide the pastry into smaller "balls". Each one will fit a tin.

Then it comes to lay those balls down....there are various ways to do it.

Pastry often tends to stick to your hands. You can put flour or olive oil on your hands to avoid this. Ii guess flour is cheaper where you live :)

You can use or not use a rolling pin; I prefer not to use it (though it's easier to strech pasty with it), because it makes the pastry too much thin and compact, removing the air from it. Possibly you can use it at first, if you find it too hard, and use your hands later. Try not to make any "holes" or "hills" on it.

Using hands, you can stretch it directly in the tin; but first, you should grease the tins with a little oil, stretching it with a handkerchief.
Tins can be round or rectangular, they're both fine.



The layer shouldn't be too thin or too thick: around 1 cm, maybe less (as it will grow a bit); it depends on personal taste anyway.


Then tomato comes.

You need less than half of a bottle of tomato puree.
Whatever you call it.
IMPORTANT -> don't even dare to use ketchup, chili or any other kind of spiced tomato sauce!

All you need is pure tomato puree; someone uses more rusty tomato pulp, but I prefer the finer one. It's personal taste again.
So, put some in a recipient and add some salt and olive oil to flavour it. Taste yourself to judge when it's flavoured enough.
Nothing more: no garlic, no basil (they're used in sauces for pasta!)

Then, add it on the layer (already in the tin) with a spoon; cover everything except a thin border.
 
PART 3 - Cooking



You should have turned on your oven by now.
Of course, better it is, better the result will be; but even with a bad oven you'll get a great pizza if the rest of the recipe is strictly followed.
Set it to 200 degrees C (400 F) or a little more.


Now, depending on the flavour, you may add some ingredients to the pizzas. Basically any other ingredients you may want to add, except any kind of cheese, speck and some other exceptions.

But first, we must define another very important concept: it's got to be PIZZA flavoured with other stuff, not OTHER STUFF flavoured with pizza, okay?
Pizza = pastry, tomato and mozzarella. You may add what you want on it, but you must not cover the layer completely! This ain't an American hamburger: a mountain of other stuff over it is a nonsense, it wouldn't be pizza anymore. Just cut the additional ingredients in small pieces and distribute them around.

A little final touch: you can add a few extra tears of oil to the borders of the pizza (where there isn't any tomato) if you want.

So, when you're ready, and your oven is ready as well, start putting the tins in it.

Cooking can take 10, 15 minutes. It heavily depends on the oven. Remember also that when the oven is very warm, it will take less time to cook (remember when you put in your 2nd or 3rd pizza, they'll cook faster)

You can judge if it's cooked or not wearing a glove and cautiously touching a border of the pizza with a fork.
It's hard to explain when's too soft or too hard, you'll learn with experience (and possibly failures). Just remember that if it's soft like the pastry it's clearly early, while if it's a kind of hard and it's turning yellowish, it's already too late.

In fact, you shouldn't cook it completely: when it's NEARLY ready you must take it out, put the mozzarella on it, and put it in again (possibly rotating it 180° for a more homogeneous cooking).

Let's stop one moment: I've just mentioned mozzarella, but in fact I skipped its description.
You MUST use mozzarella, and not any other kind of cheese (except buffalo mozzarella, which is even better)
You need 2 mozzarellas (125gr each) per tin, more or less. It depends on the size of the tin anyway.
So, as soon as you insert your first pizza in the oven, while you wait, put the mozzarellas on a dish, and cut them into very little pieces (NOT slices).

Summarizing: pastry+tomato+other into the oven; when it's almost cooked, add mozzarella and put it inside again for a couple of minutes. It's just the time to make it melt: you can judge looking at it. If it's turning yellow or brown, you're burning it.
Timing is very important: sometimes you'll take it out too early to put mozzarella, and you'll have to choose a compromise between a raw pastry and a burned topping.





PART 4 - Variants and flavours


Let see what can do and what you can't.
(in [] ingredients that you must put in when the pizza is almost cooked (such as mozzarella); in {} ingredients you must put even later. The rest goes in together with tomato).
Keep in mine that extra ingredients are always cut into little pieces

The basic favour is Margherita.
Ingredients: tomato, [mozzarella]
if you want, add oreganum. A bit of basil too if you want.



In my own opinion, some of the best flavours:

Ham and Mushrooms
Ingredients: tomato, cooked ham, champignons, [mozzarella]


Ham
Ingredients: tomato, cooked ham, [mozzarella]

Napoletana
Ingredients: tomato, capers, salted anchovies (salted, not fresh!), [mozzarella]
As this will result is a very salty pizza, it's recommended not to add salt to tomato


Cherry tomatos and buffalo mozzarella
Ingredients: tomato, cherry tomatos, [buffalo mozzarella]
As this will result is a little saltless pizza, it's recommended to add salt on or inside cherry tomatos too.
Buffalo mozzarella is more expensive, but it's worth the cost!


Napoletana + Cherry tomatos and buffalo mozzarella
Ingredients: tomato, cherry tomatos, capers, salted anchovies, [buffalo mozzarella]
No need for less or more salt here: the extra water produced by cherry tomatos and mozzarella mets with the extra salt caused by capers and anchovies, creating a perfect mix!

Raw ham, cherry tomatos and buffalo mozzarella
Ingredients: tomato, cherry tomatos, [buffalo mozzarella], {raw ham}
Raw ham (such as Parma ham) is already very salted and doesn't need to be cooked (it would dry otherwise)

Sausage
Ingredients: tomato, fresh pork sausage, [mozzarella]

Sausage and Ceps
Ingredients: tomato, fresh pork sausage, cep (Boletus / porcini, whatever you call them) mushrooms, [mozzarella]


Salami
Ingredients: tomato, hot salami, [mozzarella]
Don't add too many salamis around, like in American pizzas.

Würstel
Ingredients: tomato, würstel (the frankfurter hot dog sausage, you know), [mozzarella]

Würstel and Arugula
Ingredients: tomato, würstel, [mozzarella], {arugula / rucola salad}

Speck and Mascarpone
Ingredients: tomato, [mozzarella], [mascarpone cheese], {speck}
Believe me, this flavour is definitely one of the best!
Speck, in case you don't know, is a kind of smoked pork ham; mascarpone cream melts with salted speck perfectly.
Though not a classic, it has become a very popular flavour in Italy


Speck and Brie
Ingredients: tomato, [mozzarella], [brie cheese], {speck}

Norma
Ingredients: tomato, [mozzarella], [ricotta cheese], {fried aubergines / eggplants}



Now, some examples of how pizza MUST NOT be:










A few forbidden ingredients:

pineapple or any other kind of fruit
egg
chicken
cinnamon
meat
pasta
french fries
ketchup
mayonnaise
beef
pork
kebab
feta
fish
chocolate
or other strange things




Now some variants.
You know, every good pizzeria has its own secrets and they're usually jealous of them.

Here are some related to the pastry.


- Milk:

Replace part of the water you needed in the pastry with milk. The result is a pastry more similar to milk dough bread.



- Potato:


You should boil one potato and press it with a spoon.
Replace some water with the water you used to boil it, and some flour with mashed potato.
If the pastry becomes too flabby, add a little flour.



- Beer/Coke:

May seem weird, but if you replace some water with beer (not too much! Or it will become bitter) or coke, the pastry will become a little sweeter and softer.




Anyway you can make experiments yourself.
I usually use one potato and some butter.
 
This post is available to the highest bidder.

(have I missed something?)
 
Oh this is great! I'll definitely try this once its all finished. One question though, what do you mean exactly by keeping the yeast and salt apart? It seems like before then you tell us to mix them together.

I also find it interesting that you have all of your measurements in weights. In America recipes measure pretty much everything by volume. Do you use a scale or something in your kitchen to measure with?
 
:lol::lol::lol::lol:

"Okay, this is a forum for a mod that we want to be able to be played with a max historical accuracy. So I'll make a thread about making pizza."

:mischief:
 
"Okay, this is a forum for a mod that we want to be able to be played with a max historical accuracy. So I'll make a thread about making pizza."

...Rhye is ITALIAN, what did you expect? :p just kidding

Pizza, Pizza
Fill up your face
The thicker the pastry
The better the base!
 
Let us gorge upon this most holy and delicious of foods, brought to us by the mighty modder and cook Rhye!

:worship::worship::worship:
 
I want pizza! And talking the truth... who doesn't like pizza!? ( propably just the unbelievers!!!! ò_o but we will burn them! )


One Pizza To Rule Them All. Rhye's Pizza.
 
part 2 posted.


Oh this is great! I'll definitely try this once its all finished. One question though, what do you mean exactly by keeping the yeast and salt apart? It seems like before then you tell us to mix them together.

yes you must mix them together but try not to add them close to each other.
Like: add yeast together with oil, water, then a part of flour, then salt, then the rest of the flour.

I also find it interesting that you have all of your measurements in weights. In America recipes measure pretty much everything by volume. Do you use a scale or something in your kitchen to measure with?

yes a scale. What do you use otherwise? :confused:
 
Hah. I actually work at a pizza place in Chicago. I make pizzas all the time. Finding out new recipes is very interesting, and I've never had Italian style pizza(Let's face it, you can't have Italian style pizza outside of Italy, just like you can't have Chicago style outside of Chicago. It always seems to get butchered in some way.)

weeeeee
 
Hah. I actually work at a pizza place in Chicago. I make pizzas all the time. Finding out new recipes is very interesting, and I've never had Italian style pizza(Let's face it, you can't have Italian style pizza outside of Italy, just like you can't have Chicago style outside of Chicago. It always seems to get butchered in some way.)

weeeeee

There is a lot of Italian Pizza style in São Paulo :crazyeye:

They are so italian that everybody in the restaurant speeks italian...

( Or this has something to do that there is more italians in São Paulo than in any city of Italy :lol: )
 
Well, I'm just saying that I've tried "Chicago Style" pizza from places outside of Chicago.. Like Atlanta and Salt Lake City...


Let me just say.. No.. not at all.

In fact, American pizza pretty much sucks. There are vry few exceptions. Chicago being one of them. Chicago pizza is by far the best I've ever had(I've never had Italian Pizza, but it's made so different, that I sometimes wonder why they are both called the same thing)
 
I'm not much of a poster but pizza is always good. Thank you
 
this thread is a heck of a thing
 
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