This recipe takes many hours of rest so prepare in the morning for pizza for dinner. Start by dissolvi the yeast in the water and leave it aside for 30 min.
Mix the flour, salt, oil together and then add the yeast. Mix well and then slowly add the rest of the water, a little bit at the time. Until you get a consistent lump of dough. It shouldn’t be sticky at this point. If you have a kitchen aid this whole process is super quick and easy
NB - I know that on your dried yeast packet it will say something like leave for 30/45 min but I find that that doesn’t work at all and the yeast will continue to rise in your stomach after you had the pizza making you feel horribly fool. Pizza like bread takes time.
Leave the dough to rest in a turned off oven or on the side (away from direct sunlight) for 4 hours. To avoid getting that dried patina on top i cover it with a clean cloth letting the cloth touch the surface of the dough and I spray water on the cloth so that I adheres to the dough nicely. You can also use cling film. When you come back to should have considerably raised to about double it’s original size or thereabouts
Now the base should be a bit sticky and some of it might have been stuck to the cloth, just remove it as best as you can and add it to the dough. Divide it into 4 balls and space them from each other so that they have space to rise again. Cover with the cloth again with the same trick as before and leave for another 4 hours.
Note - you can leave it for more hours to rest if needed (just be mindful there the top of the base might dry out a bit more) or as little as 2 hours for each step if needed
Now we are ready to go! Start by blasting the oven on the highest setting. I use the ventilated setting. If you have pizza stones or large tiles but them in the oven now to get really hot.
You can use tomato sauce straight on the base but I find that it’s too watery so I like to make a tomato base by adding chopped onions to a pan with olive oil, add passata, basil leaves, sugar and veg stock and leave to cook for about 10 min until it’s less watery.
Start working the base by making it as thin as possible, this might take a bit of time as the base should be quite elastic. Bear in mind that it will rise a bit in the oven so the thinner the better.
Use semolina to not get it to stick or flour if you don’t have semolina. We like to prevale the base as it gets tricky to remove the pizza from the counter top once you put the ingredient on otherwise. To do this use a metal tray or other wise semolina and out the base in the oven to cook for literally 1 min and remove it. Now it won’t stick anymore
Add couple of spoons of tomato sauce to each base and spread evenly not leaving too much border. Add mozzarella (if you are adding anchovies add the anchovies before the mozzarella) and whatever topping you are having. If you want to add Parma ham, it will need to be added once cooked so you will make a Margherita and then add the Parma ham afterwards. Cook in the oven for 7/8 min.
Tip- if you made more base then you needed you can keep the base aside and make focaccia with it instead
