First Time making Homemade pizza. HELP!

sandraroffey

i make a 'sort of' pizza. it goes this way;

make a rich pastry base, using eggs and milk. use it as a base on a pie plate/dish with small sides.(I use an old pyrex lid, upside down).part bake it. while its part baking place into a saucepan some chopped up bacon or ham, chopped onions and chopped mushrooms. fry in oil and when they almost done add a tin of tomatoes or passatta, and lots or oregano. salt and pepper to taste and cook it right down until it reduces to a thick sauce. put into the part baked pastry case and put it in the oven. when nearly done through, sprinkle with grated cheese. cook for a further few minutes until the cheese has melted.

so as you see, it is a sort-of pizza, but, depending on the thickness of the filling, its also almost a tart.

darned tasty, whatever it is.

noapron

Just a quick thing I do: I use smoked bacon, but I trim the fat and give it a quick fry. I find otherwise it can make the top a bit greasy. Not done it, but does your husband like peppers? You could cook some with say onion, and then whizz it so it has roughly the same consistency as the tomato sauce bases.

I always use the pizza dough setting on my breadmaker but I find I inevitably make too much, so recently I have made extra bases with the tom sauce and grated cheese on top and frozen. This might be OK if you like a tomatoey base. If you like a healthier pizza (I'm Type 2, so I do try!), I make bases for me, which are just under half wholemeal and half plain and then I chuck in some oatmeal and linseed,to make up the half and half weight. it is nice.

Another thing I've just found, is that if I cook the pizzas at 220 degrees C for about 20 mins they are better than if I reduce the temperature to 200 - which I used to do because the oven has a fan. HTH

ginvzt

I make my base from:

175g flour
1tsp yeast
1tsp (or less) sugar
1/2tsp salt
2tbsp olive oil
4-5tbsp tepid water (to make your dough good consistency)

Mix all together, kneed (I don't leave to raise, unless I make the dough before hand, like in the morning before work), roll out. We like our pizzas thin, so we have thin ones. The trick we learned recently is to turn the oven to the highest possible temperature. Measure out your pizza base for a tray and put the tray in the oven (without pizza). We use kitchen foil in our trays, so we make our pizza on the foil - putting all the toppings, etc. Once it is ready, take the tray, quickly transfer pizza to the tray (carefully not to burn your hands) and pop back in the oven.

It literally takes few minutes and it is ready - about 5-7, depending on the thickness of the base (and of course, on the temperature of the oven). It "bubbles" up nicely! Oh, might have to do pizza again this week!

Btw - the ingredients are for one big pizza base (we use a large round tray and a rectangular tray, and this amount fills wither of them nicely)

kemo_2002

ive got a gas oven, how long would you cook a thickish pizza and at what gas mark?

CCP

I've got an electric oven and cook mine at 200 degrees, which is equivalent to gas mark 6. The only answer to 'how long' is "until it's cooked" - depending on how thick it is and what toppings I've put on, they tend to take 20-25 minutes in my oven, but it might be more or less in yours so just keep an eye on it and take it out as soon as it's golden and bubbly, with a brown crust. :drool:

I love pizza. I want pizza for dinner now!

kemo_2002

if i want to put sausage on it (by sausage i mean regular sausage) would i cook it before hand separetaly? same goes with bacon?

ginvzt

You can't get your oven too hot, as traditionally pizzas are baked in a wood-fired oven, where temperatures get easily to 350-400 C and more!

CCP

kemo_2002 wrote: »

if i want to put sausage on it (by sausage i mean regular sausage) would i cook it before hand separetaly? same goes with bacon?

I would cook them first, to get some of the fat / liquid out so it doesn't make your pizza greasy or soggy.

ginvzt - that's a good point. I'll have to try cooking my pizza at a higher temperature and see what happens. I'll settle for any excuse for experimenting with pizza.

ginvzt

I think we saw this on one of the cooking programs (Heston Bluemental?), where he was trying to recreate the optimal condition for pizza. We were scared the first time we did it and kept checking the pizza every minute (literally sitting in front of oven and making sure it didn't burned). We left it for 8 minutes and it was too long! We used to keep our pizzas in for about 15-20 minutes. This trick makes dinner much faster, and in our opinion, pizza much tastier!

CCP

Right, I've just changed my mind on my mealplan for next week so that I can fit in an experimental pizza. Of course, if it doesn't go right first time I'll have to try again. And again. And again...