Pizza and Friends

So. You need pizza dough, or breadsticks, or calzones, or whatever. Line muffin pans to make little bready baskets? The only limit is your imagination.

Yeast comes in two varieties, the stuff you add to liquid, and the stuff you add dry.

Active or traditional yeast has to be revived in warm liquid with sugar first.

Instant, fast-rise, or special pizza yeast, goes in DRY.

So first ascertain what you have.

(We have yet to figure out if bread machine yeast can be used as a dry yeast substitute. We THINK it can.)

So, for active or traditional:

Start
4 teaspoons of yeast, in
2 cups of hot water, with
2 teaspoons of sugar

Let this go frothy, about ten minutes

Then, add it to:

6 cups of flour
1 tablespoon of salt
4 tablespoons of olive oil (or melted butter)

And knead it WELL.

Leave this to double in size, covered.

For instant, fast-rise or pizza yeast:

6 cups of flour
1 tablespoon salt
4 1/2 teaspoons sugar
7 tsp yeast

Then add:

2 cups hot water
9 tablespoons oil


KNEAD REALLY WELL.

This can be used straight away.

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Take your kneaded dough, divide it up as required and roll it out to HALF the final thickness you desire.

Shape it and leave it aside while you assemble your toppings.

OK, now the fun stuff.

Assuming this is not one of those weird modern white pizzas or something.......

First you'll need some tomato sauce. Any. Add garlic or herbs to taste, and spread over the dough, but don't overdo it. There is nothing worse than too much tomato sauce. I find that 5 tablespoons of sauce on an extra large pizza ( = 1/4 of above recipe) is plenty. Add garlic, herbs, spices etc to sauce. Let it sit.

Then you need veggies and/or meat. Sliced/diced/cut up small. You may want to cook some meats a bit first, e.g. bacon. It's only going to be in the oven 20 minutes so plan accordingly.

We regularly use onions, green peppers, mushrooms, salami, tiny meatballs, tomatoes, etc. but really, you can use anything.

I think artichoke hearts and olives go well, but it's a matter of taste. Most people like pepperoni.

Then cover everything with LOTS of cheese. Don't skimp on the cheese. Cheddar, mozarella, goat cheese, whatever.

Bake it, serve it and SERVE WINE with it.


Bake at 200C for 20 minutes.