Pizza Making. No really. (Bad jokes included)

One of the things I like doing is experimenting with food. And one of my signature things is pizza.
Some of my friends have asked me how I make them, so I thought I'd actually do an informative post about how I go about it.


Encino's dodgy pizza making guide. Complete with bad jokes.


(Makes 3 pizzas or so, depending on how thin and how large you go. Stop thinking dirty.)

The dough.

About 1.5 cups of warm water into a big bowl. Add a 7g satchet of dry active yeast, some sugar (or honey), some salt and some olive oil.

Stir it a bit, leave it for a few mins or until it froths up slightly. Like when I see Victoria's secret models on the telly.

Use a fork and start stirring in some flour. You'll probably end up using 3 -3.5 cups, but you don't need to get carried away with measuring. I find measuring anything is boring. That's probably why I have so many speeding fines, and the desk I made is kind of oblong shaped.

Just add flour until it forms a soft dough. Then tip it onto a floured surface, and keep adding flour over the top and kneading. Bear in mind this is "kneading" and not "needing". You don't want to be standing at the kitchen bench in tears complaining that the dough isn't there for you enough.

Should take a few mins, and you'll have a non sticky dough that is slightly elastic to the touch. Ie it springs back a bit when you poke it. Like my dad's pot belly. Although since you're dealing with food you probably don't want to be thinking about that.

Lightly oil a bowl, stick the dough in, cover it with a teatowel and leave it for about 30mins - 45mins in a warm place... basically until it doubles in size. Stop thinking dirty.

After that, you can cut it into about 3 equal pieces. Keep the other pieces covered with a teatowel to stop them drying out while you are working on one. If you're racist, don't worry, this doesn't make the dough turn Muslim or anything.

At this time you can turn the heater on full to start getting it cranking. Stop thinking dirty!

Roll it into a ball. Sprinkle some semolina or extra flour onto the work surface, and pat the ball down hard to flatten it. Like when your girlfriend comes home late. Not that I'm one of those guys that beats up on a woman or anything.
You can just use a rolling pin and thin it out, but I'm lazy, and like to play with my food, so I usually stretch it by hand, and do tricky flips and stuff to impress the lay-dees.
Remember with pizzas that they are like supermodels, the thinner the better.

Either get a perforated pizza tray, or put it on baking paper directly on the oven racks, or onto a hot terracotta tile/pizza stone. Spray some oil onto the tray or baking paper first, then put the base on that. Then spray some oil onto the base. Olive oil or vegetable oil is fine. Just not the GTX2 from the garage.

If you're going to use tomato sauce base, then just buy the passata cooking sauce or pureed tomatoes, and add some olive oil and herbs to it. You could also use pesto as a base, or any other sauce, (ie sweet chilli, bbq). Or you could have a marscapone cheese base.
This is also good as a base for dessert pizzas, or use chocolate sauce.

Usually the order of ingredients is sauce, herbs, cheese, meat, other stuff. Bear in mind that this "other stuff" should usually be edible. Tomato, playdough and lego pizza might sound good when you've had a few drinks, but in reality, not so good.

Remember it's not www.ingredient-gangbang.com here...more than about 4 or 5 will spoil it.

Whack it in the oven on full heat, on the top shelf. You may want to rotate it after a few mins, to even out the golden brownness.. kind of like rolling yourself over at the beach.

That's it! Bit of rocket and lemon juice on top afterwards, or some fresh herbs like basil or rosemary always looks impressive. It's the pizza equivalent of shoving socks down your undies.