HOMEMADE PIZZA

Pizza. It’s great.

You know that, I know that. Nothing more to say here. The world is addicted.

Homemade pizza on the other hand, sometimes struggles to live up to all the glory.

Well, not anymore.

Restaurant quality up in here! Homemade pizza with bacon, feta and rocket.

Pizza at it’s most basic = base + sauce + cheese. If you master that combination, the glory will be yours. At home that means making your own base, and your own sauce (and cheese if you’re a cheese maker I guess). It sounds harder than it is. After you’ve done it once, you’ll never go back.

From there, you can add whatever topping combination you fancy, but also remember to not overdo them. Don’t add too many or too much toppings (I keep to a max 3 topping rule). Simplicity is king.

If you’re making this, you’re friends will love you, and you will love you.

So, to no further avail, I gift you my dependable thin pizza crust recipe as well as my tomato base recipe. These will give you the wings to fly, and make marvelous creations of your own.

Homemade pizza crust and tomato base prepped and ready.

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Pizza crust Recipe

Ingredients

These will give you one pizza base.

1/2 cup lukewarm water

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon honey

1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Instructions

Pizza crust is just a combination of water, flour, salt and yeast (this recipe also has half a teaspoon of honey). It’s basic, but important to give it the love it deserves, so don’t try to rush it too much. And with each try at making this, it will get better and better.

1. Preheat your oven at 200°C. If you have a pizza stone, remember to place it in your oven, as it heats up. If not, you can just prep a baking sheet with some baking paper.

2. In a cup, mix together the lukewarm water, yeast and honey. Let that sit until the yeast forms a foamy layer at the top. It takes about 5 min or so.

3. In a large bowl, measure out your flour and salt, and add the yeast mixture once it’s ready.

4. Stir the mixture so that it comes together, first using a spoon, and then using our hands. If the mixture is really sticky, add a little bit more flour.

5. Transfer the dough ball onto a lightly dusted surface, and start kneading. This is a really important step to make sure that your yeast and all the ingredients is thoroughly worked through. So, get your back in there! You need to go at it for a good 10 minutes or more. What initially looked like a shaggy lumpy will turn into a smooth and tacky ball. If your gluten is well developed, you can stretch your dough very thin and it won’t break, and for a thin pizza, that’s what we want.

6. Start shaping your pizza. With your hands, flatten your dough ball to be as thin as you can get it ( I always end up cheating and rolling it out with a wine bottle).

7. Place your base onto your pizza stone, or baking sheet. I don’t think you have to do this, but I always drizzle my base with some garlic and olive oil and pre-bake it a little bit (not until it’s browned), before I add all the sauce and the toppings, just to make sure it turns out crunchy in the end.

Tomato Base Recipe

The secret to the sauce is using fresh ingredients (no canned tomatoes).

4-5 big red juicy tomatoes

1 tsp garlic

Handful of fresh basil

1 tsp paprika

1tsp Italian spice

1 cilli (optional)

Olive oil (for drizzling)

Salt to taste

Instructions

You can make the sauce 1 of two ways. You can either, roast your ingredients together in the oven, which will give it great flavour, or you can go the traditional way and boil them together in a sauce pan (still fantastic, with less dishes). Depending on my time and mood, I use either or.

Method 1 - Oven roasted

Preheat your oven at 200°C.

Cut tomatoes into quarters, and place in an oven dish.

Sprinkle minced garlic, Italian spice, chili (optional) and salt over the tomatoes and then drizzle with olive oil.

Roast in oven for 30 min

Once it’s done, add fresh basil to the mix, and blend everything together with a hand blender.

Method 2 - Traditional sauce pan

1. With stove on medium heat, add olive oil and garlic to the pan, and let it cook together for 5 minutes.

2. Add chopped tomatoes and stir it all together.

3. Stir in Italian spice, chili (optional) and salt, and give it another little drizzle with olive oil.

4. Let it simmer together for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

5. Stir in chopped basil. Let it simmer together for 5 minutes.

6. Finally blend it all together with a hand blender.

Once you've got your sauce, spread generously over your prepared base.

Now that you've got this, go and make your own marvelous creation.