Sooz’s pizza recipe
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home made pizza from Sooz
The lovely Sooz from Last Biscuit has shared her pizza recipe with us.
You might remember a few Fridays ago, we got caught red handed with a dustbin demon in the form of a polystyrene tray from a shop bought pizza. Boo.
Sooz suggested we make our own pizza and here’s her recipe.
One of our readers, Elaine has tried it with great success and recommends it. While Jane recommends we get creative and choose 4 different toppings for each quarter to make our own ‘crazy pizza’
Ingredients
250ml warm water
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
10g pack of active yeast – I use dried yeast and follow the instructions on that packet instead (I think I use 15g of dried and far less sugar, this recipe is too sweet for my tastes!)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
350g plain flour
1 tsp salt
Method
1.Prove the yeast – dissolve the sugar in the warm water add the yeast (make sure it gets wet) then leave for 10 minutes until it’s all foamy and bubbly (if it doesn’t go foamy and bubbly you need new yeast!)
2.Mix dry ingredients together, add oil and yeasty water gradually, until the dough forms a ball and doesn’t absorb any more of the flour.
3.Flour your work surface and knead the mixture for 10 mins (the mixture should be slightly sticky – if it’s too sticky add more flour and knead it in – when you’ve finished kneading it should still be slightly moist and tacky)
4.Form the dough into a ball, put some oil in a clean bowl (at least twice the size of your bowl) put the dough in and swirl it about a bit so it’s covered in oil, flip it over so you can cover the other side of the dough with oil, cover with a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place for about an hour.
5.After an hour punch the dough so it deflates, then knead it on a floured surface for about a minute.
6.Put it back in the bowl and cover to rest – at this point you can either freeze it to use later, or leave to rest for between 10mins to – 2 hours (2 hours is better) (recipe says it should make 2 14 inch pizzas, but we get 4 smaller ones out of it, I suppose it depends how big/thick you want them to be) then roll out and stretch with your hands, put whatever toppings you like on and cook in oven at gas mark 9, 240C, 475F for about 10-20 mins depending on size.
Sooz’s tips
I freeze the dough raw in blobs, then get them out the morning of the day I want pizza and they’re defrosted and ready for a bit of a knead and roll out by tea time, I suppose you could roll them out ready and top them before freezing if you have room, I’ve never tried it so I couldn’t really say for sure!
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We make home-made pizza and quiche these days because shop bought ones – even if packaging is fine – just don’t make enough for our hungry family. I use a slightly different recipe that doesn’t need proving. Not a really authentic pizza crust but we like it 🙂
@LJayne: You’re right! So often shop bought stuff is full of air or chemicals which do little to fill hungry tummies. Glad you have found a recipe base you like 🙂
No argument over which pizza if you allow the kids to fill in their own quarter. The graduates were reminiscing last weekend over their favourite toppings on home-made pizza. “Remember the only thing I’d eat was sweetcorn pizza?!” “Mine was always ham and pineapple”,.. Then there is often something left-over in the fridge that can go in. Who cares if there is only one mushroom with a whole lot of sweet pepper? You can use it on just one quarter and put something else on the others or slice it thinly and use it to decorate the whole pizza.
@Jane: Great ‘use it up’ ideas, Jane – I’m beginning to like the whole pizza idea more and more 🙂 I hadn’t even considered that of course it doesn’t matter if you only have 1 mushroom and a whole load of something else – thanks for the inspiration