Pizza and pizza-like creations are common throughout Italy, and a number of regions claim the honor of having invented pizza in the first place. Not that pizza’s invention could ever be proven — the idea of slipping a flattened disk of dough graced with a topping into a hot oven and baking it quickly is amazingly simple, and many people must have come up with it independently.
Indeed, in a post to It.Hobby.Cucina, the Italian general cooking newsgroup, RoDante da Fano traces pizza’s origins from Ancient Egypt to Imperial Rome, where there were a number of different kinds of flat baked breads with a variety of sweet or salty toppings, and goes on to say that the descendents of these proto-pizzas were common throughout the peninsula in the 1700s.
The Margherita is still the most popular pizza today, perhaps because it’s simple, light and tasty. It’s also, in some ways, a better foil for the pizzaiolo’s skill than some a pizza with a more elaborate toppings, because what little there is has to be perfect: Well-risen well-turned dough; mozzarella di bufala, made from the milk of the water buffaloes that are raised around Naples; good light tomato sauce; good extra virgin olive oil; and fresh basil.
Ideally it should be baked in a wood-fired oven, whose hot floor will rapidly crisp the dough.
At home, a pizza stone can take the place of the terracotta floor of the wood-fired oven, and one can substitute the mozzarella di bufala with mozzarella fiordilatte made from cow’s milk (as do most Italian pizzerias).
To make the dough for 2 12-inch pizzas, you’ll need:
- 1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons, or about 20 grams) active dry yeast
- 1 1/3 cups (330 ml) warm (105-115 F, or 42-45 C) water
- 3 1/2 – 3 3/4 cups (400-430 g) all purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- A healthy pinch of salt
Begin by dissolving the yeast in the water, in a large mixing bowl; let it stand for 5 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and mix, either by hand or with a mixer set to low speed, until the ingredients are blended. Now hand-knead the dough or mix it with a dough hook setting the speed to low for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Coat the insides of another bowl with olive oil and turn the dough in it to coat it too, then cover with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place to rise for an hour, or until it doubles in volume.
For the baking, if you have a wood-fired pizza oven, fire it up. If you are instead using your kitchen oven, preheat it to 475 F (250 C) — if you are using a baking stone it should heat for at least 45 minutes. Otherwise grease and dust two flat baking sheets with corn meal. Divide the dough in half, shape each half into a ball and let them sit for 15 minutes.
You are now ready to assemble the pizzas: Ladle and spread a half cup or so of tomato sauce or chopped canned tomatoes over the disks, leaving an inch of sauce-free rim, add the toppings (see next page), and bake.If you’re using a baking stone and have a baker’s peel (a thin metal disk with a handle), lightly flour it, slide the pizza onto it, and transfer it to the stone with a deft yank — the flour will keep the dough from sticking. If you don’t have a peel, use a flat cookie sheet instead, lightly flouring it, to transfer the pizza from the work surface to the stone.If you’re using a metal baking pan you should bake the pizza towards the bottom of the oven.
Cooking Karen suggested baking on the bottom rack for about 4 minutes, or until the pizza is firm enough to slide off the pan, and then slide it from the pan straight onto the rack to finish cooking.
The pizza will in any case be done when the crust is browned and the toppings are cooked; this takes 3 minutes in a wood-fired oven and about 15 at home. If you discover that the mozzarella begins to brown before the other ingredients are cooked to your satisfaction, the next time add it after the pizza (with the other toppings) has baked for about 5 minutes.Having said all this, once you have your dough, what to do with it? The standard topping combinations one encounters in Italy differ somewhat from those I have encountered elsewhere. The quantities given on the next page will be sufficient for one pizza each, so if you make the dough given above you will need to double the amounts, or select two.Pizza.
