Since I started learning to bake last September, I had been thinking I want to make pizza for the kids. They order Pizza Hut takeaway now and then so I know they like pizza. Anyway, the thought lingered and lingered and finally on Friday, I declared to hubs I would make pizza for lunch for everyone on Saturday which is today. After the declaration, I had to um.. follow up with actually making the pizza.
I already knew which pizza dough I wanted to try - the
Neapolitan pizza dough. It looked easy enough.
I had mangled my dough hook so I made everything by hand. On Friday before I went for my croissant baking class, I mixed the dough and put it in the fridge. Around 1am before I went to sleep, I took a look at the dough and it had risen so much it went above the brim of the container. I was quite worried that in the morning there would be dough all over the fridge. Still I was too lazy (it was 1am forgodssake) to do anything about it. I had clingwrapped the dough quite well so fingers crossed.
I was lucky. The clingwrap did its job well. No mess.
I have a fairly small workstation to work the dough. It's a little tall table my brother had given me years ago. It is the perfect height to work with without getting backaches or neck pain. My oven has a small depth so I made 6 dough roughly 170 to 180g each.
I opted for a very safe sauce - tomato. I used 2 cans of whole/diced tomatoes, flavoured with parsley, pepper and small amount of salt. Then I blended the mixture. It wasn't thick enough. I wonder what I need to do to thicken the sauce other than cook it down.
I don't have a pizza peel so I fashioned one. I used a cheap metal thingy I have though I don't know what its purpose is. I placed parchment paper on it.
This was the first pizza I made. I had great difficulty shaping it. I topped it with yellow capsicum (with skin peeled), cheese, chicken ham and bacon.
My girl got to eat the first pizza. She liked it enough to ask me to make more in future. She asked for some tomato sauce and she ate her pizza after dipping into more sauce. Like eating
roti prata!
I baked each pizza on parchment paper/baking stone at 250 deg C for 6 min. After removing the parchment paper, I baked for an additional 2 min.
Overall I'm quite happy with the outcome. The crust is not bad despite the poor shaping. I made one pizza without cheese for myself. Actually I don't like to eat pizza! But I liked the one I made. In terms of taste, I believe the sauce can be better. Needs some kick.
My son did not complain about the pizza. He said it was okay. I was quite afraid he would say: please don't make this again. He did request that I don't put capsicum on his pizza in future. And absolutely no pineapples. Good to know.
Hubs said I should make the pizza again but we should get a different kind of cheese. This round we got something that said "pizza topping" but it wasn't that good.
I'm happy my first attempt at pizza turned out not too bad. We had leftovers and the kids and hubs ate them for dinner!!!
4 comments:
Good job! I like making pizza and it's fun to personalize it, like leaving cheese off. I just drain the tinned tomato in a sieve before mixing it with onion or whatever.
Hi Jane, why didn't I think of draining the liquid? Thanks for the simple solution. Yes, I just remembered my son requested for onions on his pizza.
Pizza success! And homemade is definitely best. I love letting dough slowly rise in the refrigerator- the flavor is so nice and you don't have to babysit it. Glad the dough didn't overflow though- I use Ziplock bags for this reason (and also because I have a tiny fridge). And it looks like you're using a steamer rack/plate/whatever it's called, which is so perfect. Macgyver-ing for the win!!
Hi Ely, Yes, I definitely hate to babysit dough. At the pastry class, we make our dough ahead and sometimes our next class is 5 days later. That means the dough is sitting in the chiller for 5 whole days. I did notice that older dough doesn't rise as well, at least for pastry. So the round metal thingy with holes is for steaming. I rarely steam anything and when I do, I use a method I learnt from my mother. Pour water in wok. Place a metal stand in wok. Put bowl of stuff to steam on metal stand when water is boiling. Cover wok.
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