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How I make pizza

I usually make pizza somewhere around once a week. I'm not claiming this makes me any sort of expert--I might just be well-practised at making bad pizza--but everyone else on the interwebs seems to have posted their favourite way of making pizza, so I'll be damned if I'm going to miss out.

The ingredients

Fairly standard:

Stuff you do

  1. Put flour, yeast, oil and salt in a large bowl and give it a mix.

  2. Add warm water a little at a time, mixing/kneading as you go. I usually use a bread maker to do the kneading, but you can do it yourself if you're feeling energetic. I usually aim for a slightly tacky dough, but not as wet as if you were making bread.

  3. Leave the dough to rise until doubled. I find this usually takes around an hour to an hour and a half.

  4. Divide the dough into three balls. If you're not ready to make pizza you can wrap the dough balls in plastic and freeze them. Although, I must say, it's a strange thing to do to make pizza dough if you didn't want pizza. But at any rate, I've found freezing the dough has no ill effect if you give it time to thaw at room temperature.

  5. Preheat the oven to as hot as it will go. If you've got a pizza stone (and it's worth getting one) put it in to preheat for at least half an hour.

  6. Roll out each ball to make a thin base. I usually aim for about 3-5mm thickness.

  7. Place the dough on the pizza stone (or a pizza tray if you don't have one) and prick it all over using a fork. Put it into the oven (without topping it!)

  8. Wait for the base to brown, remove it from the oven.

  9. Top the base with whatever you like: cheese, sauce, olives, paper clips, sea shells--I don't care.

  10. Slide it back into the oven without the stone/pizza tray--just straight onto the oven tray. This gives the bottom of the pizza a chance to cook and crisp up.

  11. You'll know when to stop cooking because your pizza looks like a cooked pizza. Remove it from the oven and serve.