Italians make their pizzas elegant in their simplicity. Don't get me wrong, there's times when a pizza with an inch-thick layer of toppings is great! But after Italy I've found myself looking more for the delicate merging of complementary flavours.
This pizza in Florence was simplicity itself. It had a thin crust, a fresh tomato sauce/passata as the base, some mozzarella cheese, and just a few pieces of Italian sausage. I've already been making my own pizza bases for a while now, and just love the flavour it lends to the pizza, so all I needed extra was some mozzarella, some sausage, and a good quality passata. Off to the local fresh food and produce markets and a delicatessen there that specialises in bits and pieces from around the globe. Given that I was making my tomato soup this week, I decided to make use of the bunch of basil that I bought for that as well.
makes 1 pizza
Ingredients
dough
1/2 cup of warm water
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups pizza flour
3/4 tsp dried yeast
topping
3-4 tbsp quality tomato passata
1 pinch dried mixed herbs
200g shredded mozzarella or pizza cheese blend
2 Italian sausages
1 handful of fresh basil, torn
Method
- To make dough, add water, oil, salt, flour, and yeast to your bread maker. Select the Dough - Pizza setting and start. Once the dough is ready turn it out onto a floured surface and knead and press it into the approximate size of your pizza tray or stone. If using a pizza stone, place the stone into the over and preheat to 200°C. Otherwise, preheat the oven at this point.
- Place pizza base on the tray, and spread the passata over the base, using a spoon in a circular motion from the centre to provide even coverage.
- Sprinkle with the dried herbs, then the cheese. Pinch out the sausage meat into small meatballs approximately 2cm in diameter and scatter across the pizza (you should end up with about 16 meatballs altogether). Finally sprinkle the fresh basil across the pizza.
- Place pizza into the over and cook for 25-30 minute until the cheese is starting brown and the sausages are cooked. Slice and serve.
All up, I was supremely happy with how the pizza turned out. I still need to work on my dough shaping ability, as I'd like the crust to be much thinner than it was (think Domino's classic crust as opposed to thin 'n' crispy, which is how I like it), but the taste was pretty spot on, and definitely a hit with my wife.
As an extra note, if you don't have a bread maker and want to make your own dough, I got my recipe from www.taste.com.au. It's got instructions there on how to make the dough by hand. The astute amongst you will note that I've halved the quantities of the ingredients for my dough. Simply because the amounts they suggest will make 2 decent sized pizza bases. I also combined the wholemeal and plain flours to be just pizza flour. I use Lighthouse brand Bread & Pizza flour which should be available from your local supermarket.
No comments:
Post a Comment