How to make pizza in a professional way
Flour, water, yeast and a little bit of flavor: these are the ingredients to make a good pizza.
Pizza Margherita, the most famous of the Italian pizzas, was founded in 1889 by the Neapolitan cook Raffaele Esposito.
If you want to make pizza at home it is important to follow some basic rules. Here's how to make a great pizza at home.
Ingredients
- 1 kg type 0 flour
- 25 g. of brewer's yeast
- 20 g salt
- lukewarm water quantum satis
- 6 tablespoons of evo oil
- tomato paste or pulp
- mozzarella
- basil
- any kind of filling
Mixture
Dissolve the yeast in a glass of warm water. Add the water to the flour, kneading by hand or by machine. Add a glass of warm water where you will have dissolved the salt and olive oil.
Remember salt and yeast must be added separately, never mixed together.
Continue to add water until the dough sticks on your hands. It must be smooth and soft, but not soft.
Lievitation
Form a ball and put it in a container - sprinkled with flour - large enough, because it will double in volume; cover it with a clean cloth and then with a wool cloth and leave it to stand for at least 2 hours at a temperature of not less than 20 degrees. Eye that there are no air draughts and draughts. The ideal - to have a soft dough - is to pass after a second leavening:
Divide the dough into 4 loaves before letting it rest again, cover the loaves with a cloth and leave to rise for a few more hours (5 to 6 hours).
Spread the dough
It takes a pinch of real art to lay the pizza in the baking tray or on a worktop
lay the pizza on the worktop
Pour in a bunch of flour on which you will place the cake. Then spread the pizza pan with your hands and not with a rolling pin from the centre, without ever squeezing the edges. Always extend the pizza with your hands from the centre outwards by rotating it. Turn it upside down several times by adding flour on the top. And if you can make the gesture of the pizza maker, throw it into the air and put it back on your hands, continuing to spread the pizza. It will be perfectly laid out.
lay the pizza in a baking pan
flour the baking tray on which you want to place the pizza, put the dough in the middle of the baking tray and gradually widen the dough with the palm of your hand and with your fingertips, from the centre outwards.
Filling
La Margherita pleases everyone and is a light alternative: tomato base, mozzarella in pieces, evo oil.
Mozzarella: cut the mozzarella into cubes and leave it to drip in a dish. It is very important to avoid the release of liquid and during cooking. Better add it to the pizza 5 minutes after the end of cooking, it will be perfect. To make pizza light or if you want a Pizza Vegana you can opt for a Pizza Marinara, remove the mozzarella and add some oregano and garlic.
Other stuffings: to add taste but few calories are recommended fresh rocket or grilled vegetables: courgettes, aubergines, peppers, radicchio or shrimps, leeks, anchovies, mushrooms.
More tasty stuffing: to add substances aimed at ham, tuna, spicy sausage, provola, sausage, sausages, artichokes and mushrooms in oil, gorgonzola, brie, sausage and friarielli, potatoes and speck.
Remember that basil, rocket, raw rocket and speck are to be added raw.
Cooking
Bake the pizza in a preheated oven for 15 minutes at 250°. The time may vary depending on the type of furnace.
Pizza can also be fried, so you have to use extra virgin olive oil or peanut oil.
Pizza brings about 270 calories every 100 grams, excluding super rich stuffings. Impossible to say no.