Okay, so who doesn’t love pizzas. It is one of our best-loved eats while watching your favorite shows, the ballgame, or just a weekend meal with beer. My husband and I were (till a few months) regular pizza eaters and being vegetarians, we used love the all-veggie-topping-pizza. A large pizza would easily suffice two meals. Why we all love pizza? Well, we don’t look for reasons. We just love it.
I generally don’t try something in my kitchen unless I’m totally convinced that its doable. Since I wasn’t that sure about making pizza from scratch, what I did a couple of times earlier was to get pizza crust and top it with my favorite toppings (veggies, mozarella cheese, pineapple)and 20 minutes later our home was welcome with a bouquet of essences. What I was glad about what was the power of control I had over the ingredients (especially cheese).
A few days back, I was motivated to bake a pizza right from scratch and googled the recipe to making the pizza dough. I was surprised by the number of results. My recipe was closest to the one below:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 packet active dry yeast (7 gms)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup warm water
First, I mixed all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Yes, I skipped the step of proofing the yeast. Added the olive oil and warm water, in batches, as I was kneading. i tweaked the recipe in that I added 1 part all-purpose flour and 1 part whole wheat flour. (The next time I am inclined to try the recipe with only whole wheat flour to make it a healthier option). It is important that the dough should not be kneaded a lot.
After that, just spray oil in the same bowl (of course, after taking out the dough. I actually kneaded my dough directly on the counter- just gave me a lot of working space). And gently roll the dough in the bowl to coat it with oil. Wrap the dough now with a shrink wrap and leave the dough undisturbed for about an hour.
In he meantime, I cut all my veggies. Onions, tomatoes, baby, spinach, green peppers, black olives. I missed adding pineapples this time, but will next time.
The next step is to roll out the dough with a rolling pin sprinkling the dough with flour to prevent it from sticking to the counter. Meanwhile, pre-heat your oven to 475 deg C. Spray some oil and pizza sauce on the flattened dough and arrange all the veggies and mozarella cheese. I then sprinkled some salt, crushed pepper, and garlic powder and put it in the oven for baking.
And what came out after 20 minutes was a delectable pizza, which tasted as good as it looked.
Alternately, the next time I bake a pizza I will be replacing the all-purpose flour entire with whole wheat flour and active dry yeast with baking powder.
Although making this pizza took a good 2 hours, yet it was a great experience, especially for a first-timer and the results were quite impressive. My next venture would be making a plum torte. In fact, I will be running to the store this evening to get some plums (hopefully I find some). So, stay tuned.
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Inspired by smittenkitchen.com
PerkyPulp 