I love pizza. There was a time that we used to order pizza to the office for lunch, especially on the day that they have a promotion, buy one get one free! When I studied at Le Cordon Bleu, we did a pizza, after seeing it, we decided to call it “Pizza à la France” “Pizza in French style”, as it looks beautiful like a cake, it actually made some people confused when they saw in my Facebook.
Today, after yesterday evening 2-hour exercise, I decided to make a pizza. Actually I always prepared the dough a day before and left it in the fridge till this morning.
Here you go, the pizza dough!
Step 1 Preparation for pizza dough (for two pizza ∅ 23-23 cm)
- Bread flour 400 gr.
- Salt 4-6 gr. (depends on the pizza sauce you used)
- Fermented dough 190 gr. ( I increase the quantity of fermented dough and reduce the dry yeast) (*)
- Dry yeast 2 gr.
- Provencal herbs 6 gr. ( I used the mixture of herbs I got in Munich)
- Water 240 ml.
- Olive oil 32 ml.
Knead all together, please don’t let the salt in direct contact with dry yeast, so it’s better hydrate the yeast before adding. Do add gradually the olive oil at the end of kneading. Let’s the dough to rest for one hour then send it to the fridge till next day use. Next day I divide my dough into two, each about 450 gr. and let it rest for 20′ before make it round and flat with the rolling pin. Then another 40-50′ of rest, before put all the garnish on top.
Please to make a lot of holes on the dough by using the folk, then apply the pizza sauce first, all veggies later. You can do the egg wash the edge of the dough, I did skip.
(*) Fermented dough: please do refer to my previous posts how to make it.
Step 2 Preparation for pizza sauce
Up to you, to buy the pizza sauce from the store or to make it at home. I prefer to make it at home, with the ingredients that I love. If the sauce is well-seasoning, you can reduce the salt adding to the dough, if not just keep as in the recipe. Here I share the recipe of the pizza sauce, but you can always try to create your own authentic sauce. Mix all together and cook until it’s thick.
- Peeled tomatoes 500 gr.
- Onions 500 gr.
- Tomato paste 150 gr.
- Sal, pepper as your taste
- Bay leaf 5 gr.
- Thyme 10 gr.
- Oregano 15 gr.
- Olive oil bottle
- Garlic (chopped) 10 gr.
- Sugar 20 gr.
Step 3 Garnish
Please refer to the below photos, that all veggies I put on top of my pizza this time, I would love to add more cherries tomatoes next time as after a few bites I realized the freshness, the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes enhanced the taste of the pizza very much.
Next time I will definitely add more cherry tomatoes, it’s really good and I like it.
About the cheese, I would love to have Mozzarella but I decided to use Cheddar…by the recipe we can add more anchovies, but I couldn’t get the one I life from the store, so I skipped it this time.
I still wonder how does it taste if we add some slices of pineapple or even grapes, pineapple – yeah, but grapes I’m not sure, I think I can add at the end of the baking. We can try next time! And one more thing, next time I will try to put the cheese underneath in order to keep the beautiful ornament created by these colorful veggies, but sometime the melted cheese can ruin the ornament.
Step 4 Baking
Bake at 250°C for 20-25 minutes. And here you go, my pizza is awesome, tasty and I love the crispy crush, even the bottom is crunchy, it’s flavorful and the inside – simply incredibly good . I love my first home-made pizza, right from the oven!
Le petit renard 