Pizza - Do it yourself!

I love pizza and I bet you do as well. It's such a comfort food, when you fancy a night in, on the couch with your bf (or not) or also when you get the family together and you have got a massive selection of different topping, not knowing what to try first. Of course, ordering a pizza, getting it delivered perfectly ready to bite in is really tempting and super convenient. 

But I promise, when you see how incredibly easy it is to make one yourself from scratch, you will change your mind. Another plus: You know exactly whats in it and it is a lot cheaper. So save yourself some dosh and get in the kitchen!

 We are gonna start with making the pizza dough:

This is gonna be enough for eight medium sized pizzas. 

You are gonna need about 1 kilogram of flour type 405. If you like it healthy use wholemeal flour. Get a cup and pour in about 600 ml of water and add a pack of yeast. Stir it and leave it for a couple of minutes. Now get yourself a big bowl and put about 500 grams of the flour in it, then add the water and about two heaped tablespoons of salt. Give the whole thing a good stir with your hands and slowly add more flour. You will not need the whole pack of flour, more about 800 grams of it. It's important that you keep an eye on the texture of your dough now. Keep kneading the dough and put it in the shape of a ball. If it stays in that shape at the beginning and then slowly breaks up then its perfect.

Now put a tea towel over it, leave it for an hour so the yeast can do its job. 

After an hour the dough will have risen. Get a big chopping board and spread about two heaped table spoons of your leftover flour onto it. Now put your bowl with the dough upside down onto it, so your dough can run down. Start kneading the dough again, you might realize that it's still sticky on the inside, and that is just fine. Your dough will look like that now: 

Get yourself a knife and chop your dough into quarters. At the latest you will now notice that the dough is still sticky on the inside. Just put a little bit of flour on the outsides of the quarters.

Now halve each quarter, so you finally have eight small dough balls. Again: If the outsides of the balls are sticky then put a little of flour onto it.

Now the dough needs a couple of hours in the fridge to firm up. Wrap each ball into cling wrap, making sure that all sides are covered, otherwise they will dry out. 

Afters two hours you can start with the exciting part: The pizza topping

Basically you can put anything really on your pizza. Having some dough in the fridge (or even in the freezer!) is such a good option to use up some leftover veges or even meat. 

Firstly you need to get your dough onto the baking tray so here is what you do: 

Get a baking tray and put some baking paper onto it. Get a large cutting board and spread some flour onto it again. Now, I am not an Italian chef and I will not tell you how to do the perfect technique, how to throw the dough up in the air, catch it, flip it - ready. No, I don't know how to do that, put you can simply bash the dough one or twice on your board so it flattens out a little. 

Now you just pick it up and let gravity do its job: The dough will stretch and all you need to do it turn it, so that you get a nice form. Hold onto the edges, as you don't want them to stretch, so you will have a nice big crust later. Pay attentions and move your hands carefully, you don't want to get any wholes in your pizza base.  

But your base on the tray and get started on the topping: Of course you can do a classic pizza with tomato sauce and mozzarella, but I'm gonna show you now what I have used on my pizza, which you can see on the picture: 

Spicy feta cheese pizza with prosciutto and olives

Instead of using tomato sauce, use spicy ajvar, for this recipe, which is a kind of relish made from peppers. Spread it all over your pizza, but leave out the edge. Now take about 20 grams of feta cheese and crumble it all over your pizza. Add about four chopped mushrooms as well as a handful of prosciutto cubes. Slice some cherry tomatoes and also add a good handful of black deseeded olives. Now so spice the whole thing up a little you wanna add some red chili, depending on how spicy you actually like it. I have used the half of a small chili, cause I like it spicy, but I don't want my mouth to burn. Chop if up finely and spread over the pizza. Season with salt, pepper and dried rosemary. If you have any leftovers crumble some more feta cheese on top and then put your pizza in the oven for about 15 minutes on 250 degrees Celsius or until your crust is browned lightly. Before serving add some fresh basil. Enjoy!