Homemade Pizza

Pizza would have to rank as one of the world's most popular and celebrated foods.

Particularly in the west where there is a large emphasis on fast and convenient food.

Pizza originated as part of  Italian cuisine and its popularity comes from the vast variety of styles and flavors that can be made plus the simplicity and relatively cheap price.

In this lesson we are going to show you how to make a homemade pizza of your choice that is very simple and cheap to make.

Once you have mastered how to make the pizza base then the topping is up to you and you can top your pizza with whatever want and like.

The only constants in practically all pizzas are the tomato paste, and to a lesser extent - cheese. Everything else is up to you.

Now the great thing about making pizza is that all the ingredients can be sourced from any supermarket or medium to large food store.

Let's start by making a trip to our local supermarket to procure the necessary ingredients.

Making pizza is a two stage process. First we must make the base or crust, then ad the topping of our choice on top of the crust.

Now the crust in our homemade pizza is made from just 5 ingredients. Flour, yeast, water, salt, and sugar although salt is not essential.

Here we are in our local supermarket.

Firstly we get the yeast. We are after dry yeast, the same as we use to make bread.

This type of boxed yeast comes with 5 small sealed sachets for easy use.

Next we get the flour. For the amount of pizzas we intend to make a 1kg bag of plain flour is ideal.

Fortunately we already have salt and sugar at home so we don't need to get them at this time.

Now we can move on to the ingredients to make the topping.

First we need the tomato paste.

At any supermarket there is always a large variety of  any one food item so it's up to you and your budget to determine what brand to buy.

Next we get a small bottle of oregan or ……

Again we'd like to stress that what ingredients you'd like on your pizza are completely up to you and the ingredients we use in this lesson are only used as a guide.

Next we choose some meat. In this instance we are going to use bacon.

Next is the cheese.

To keep a bit of variety, we visit the vegetable section to get some spinach.

Now we have all our ingredients, it's time to start making the pizza.

First we will start with the crust.

After cleaning and clearing a suitable work space we need a large bowl and measuring jug or cup.

First, we remove 1 sachet of dry yeast from the box.

Next we put approximately 150ml of hot water into the measuring glass

Next we put 1 tablespoon of sugar into the hot water and mix, making sure all the sugar dissolves in the water.

Next we fill the measuring cup with approx 350ml of cold water. This leaves the sugary water slightly warm in temperature.

Next we pour one sachet of yeast into the measuring cup. The yeast will react and 'eat' the sugar and a luke warm water temperature is ideal for the yeast to behave in this way.

If the water is too hot or too cold the yeast will not react properly with the water and the dough will not develop properly.

After pouring the dry yeast into the measuring cup we stir the contents then let the mixture sit for a while whilst the yeast reacts with the sugar solution.

Whilst this reaction is taking place we can move on to other ingredient preparations.

In this case where we plan to use spinach, we soak the spinach in water for a short while to bring back some of the moisture and freshness lost whilst it has been bagged and sitting on the supermarket shelf.

We simply soak the spinach in a small glass filled with water. You can do this to any vegetable you plan to use that appears old and dry to bring back some of it's freshness.

Here we have all the ingredients apart from the cheese which is keeping cool in the fridge.

Here you can see the sugar water becoming cloudy as the yeast reacts with the sugar in the water. We leave this sit for about 10 minutes.

To make our crust, we first pour the entire 1 kg bag of flour into a large bowl. We would like to ad that the amount of crust dough that we are about to make will make enough pizza crust for about 10 pizzas. So whatever pizza dough you have left over will be ok to keep for 1 or 2 days before using.

Next we ad approximately 1 tablespoon of salt.

Next we ad the yeast and sugar mixture into the flour and mix thoroughly.

Much the same way you would knead bread dough.

After kneading for 5 or so minutes place the crust dough back in the bowl and let sit for a few minutes while we prepare the other ingredients.

First we prepare the olives, first draining away the liquid then slicing them up into small pieces. Leftover olives that we are not going to use are put in an air tight bag and placed in the fridge for later use.

To do the chopping and dicing of  food items for the pizza topping we need a good chopping knife and clean chopping board.

During this time we can turn on our oven so it will be at the optimum temperature by the time our pizza is ready to be baked.

We set our oven temperature at ****** degrees celcius.

Next we chop up the spinach which has become much firmer and moister since being soaked in water.

Next we cut up the bacon.

Next we prepare our tomato paste

Now it's time to prepare the crust.

To stop the crust dough from sticking to our working surface, sprinkle some flour on the surface.

Then we break off a piece of dough, large enough to make the crust for 1 pizza. If you want your pizza crust thin then you won't need as much dough than if you want the crust thick.

Experience will be your best guide as to the right amount of dough you'll need to make the size pizza you intend to make.

Next, flatten out the piece of dough with a rolling pin to the size of your pan base.

Next, place the dough in the pan base making sure it completely covers the bottom of the pan.

Cut off excess dough with a rolling cutting knife or any other knife that will do the trick.

The first topping we use is to spread tomato paste over the crust.

Next we sprinkle gabon, which is a type of ***** over the tomato paste

Next we spread out our bacon

Next we spread out our spinach

Then the Olives

and finally the cheese. and a sprinkling of pepper

We then place in the oven for a period of 10 minutes or so.

And here is our final pizza.

cut into pieces with our rolling cutting knife and enjoy.

From here with the crust dough and other ingredients we have left, we can continue on making more pizza and have the option of changing topping ingredients if we want to.

Bon appetit

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