Making your own pizza

I’ve always liked making my pizza at home and sometimes find I enjoy the flavours more than buying pizza out (and without the expensive price tag). Recently, we started buying pre-made pizza dough at the supermarket (sold in the refrigerated section near the fresh pasta) and stretching it out into our own custom pizza bases. After a few tries, and trying different brands of dough, we have the process down pat, and it is quickly becoming one of our favourite meals in the week.

Here’s how we make pizzas at home.

Oven

To make good pizza you need a really hot oven. For our oven, that means turning it up the highest it can go (260 degrees Celsius). We don’t think it ever really reaches this temperature, and it loses a lot of heat when you open the door, but the hotter the better. We also use a ceramic pizza stone that we pre-heat in the oven for around an hour before we put the pizzas in.

Dough

We use shop-bought dough, as we’ve had good results, but pizza dough is very easy to make (flour, water, yeast, oil, salt). The dough we use is well risen and puffs up nicely in the oven, and because of this, it’s important to stretch it out very thinly beforehand. We’ve found that forming a ball with the dough, then flattening it and using your fist and fingertips to push it out (rotating as you go), works well. Leave a border that is a bit thicker to form the crust (and contain the toppings). It’s important to use a well-floured board (and have extra flour on hand) so you can slide the dough off the board into the oven (it’s a tragedy when the pizza you’ve poured your heart into sticks to the board—trust me).

Sauce

We make our own sauce using canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and dried herbs, but there are lots of options for pizza sauce (even something non-traditional, like pesto!). You can buy pre-made sauces at the supermarket or just use tomato passata or paste.

Cheese

My partner likes to grate parmesan cheese over the sauced base first, before adding small chunks of mozzarella. We buy a large chunk of mozzarella that we chop up. Mozzarella has the stretchy and stringy quality that is typical of pizza cheese, although it is a pain when it comes to washing up (gets stuck to everything!).

Toppings

The best thing about making homemade pizza is being able to choose your own toppings and put as much or as little on as you want. My partner won’t sway from his classic pepperoni, but I like to try different meats (i.e. jamon), vegetables (i.e. roasted capsicum), and added extras (i.e. basil, chilli maple sauce). Get creative with your toppings and try things that you wouldn’t normally find in restaurants!