Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Homemade margherita pizza

I love making homemade pizza.  It's our heritage.  When we were kids, my brothers and I would invite all  our friends over to the house and my mom would whip up 15 pizzas for us to enjoy.  Great childhood memories for me and my friends to share.  

After a lot of trial and error, I have found a great dough recipe, so simple.  And the great thing is you can add whole grains or substitute spelt or  whole wheat flour.  Here is what I did.

I mixed 1 cup room temperature water,  2 teaspoons of active dry yeast and 1 tablespoon of raw honey together.  Set it aside for 10 minutes to proof.  

Poured the yeast mixture into my food processor and gradually added 3 cups of unbleached, organic  bread flour.  Mix until dough forms soft ball.  Remove from processor and knead slightly.  Put into lightly oiled bowl and covere with plastic wrap and a towel until  it doubled in size, about 1 hour.
Punch down and let rise again, about 1.2 hour.

Assembling the pizza:

Pinch a piece of the dough for whatever size pizza you plan to make.  I find making personal size works for us.  Flatten dough to size you want and put it on pizza pan or stone sprinkled with corn meal.  I have had great success with corn meal on the pan instead of oil.  The pizza does not burn and comes right off for cooling.
 Ingredients I  used:
 Olive oil
chopped garlic
fresh basil
sliced tomatoes, I take the seed out and skin them
goat cheese (I used a creamy goat cheese and it was awesome)
Gruyere for topping

Assemble all ingredients except gruyere.  Bake pizza in oven for about 10 minutes before adding Gruyere for last 10 minutes of baking.
Bake 425-450

Delicious!!  



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