TriffiD's Pizza

Hi there!
Unfortunately this is a day late for I planned to help Blueberry to a good birthday pizza. But there is always a next year.

Pizza has two very important basic parts. The first is the sauce you spread on it, the other part is the dough from which the pizza base is made.
So here comes what you need for a proper sauce:

- 800 g Tomatoes (can be fresh or in a tin - it will be blended anyways)
- 140 g tomato purée
- 1 small onion
- 1 bay leaf (I prefer fresh ones, cause they don't crumble in the sauce and can be removed properly afterwords)
- the sap of 1/2 lemon
- 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper (dunno if this is correct - I mean the hot version of paprika powder)
- 1/2 teaspoon of paprika (the mild version this time)
- 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of oregano (grated ??? - You can see it in the pic)
- 1 tablespoon of butter
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- some salt and pepper and some ground chillies

All right, this sounds complicated, but what follows is simple.
Put the butter and oil into a pot (take a larger one, because this will speed things up a little) and heat it up. Cut up the onion into very small cubes and put them into the butter/oil and steam them until they become glassy. Put some rips into the bay leaf and add it to the onions.

Now blend the tomatoes (if you like bits in the sauce - leave some - I don't recommend it) and put them and everything else into the pot.

Stir until it starts boiling, then turn down the heat and put a lid on the pot. Leave the lid open a little, because we want the water to evaporate. This should now bubble on for about 1 1/2 hours. Stir it from time to time and see to it that the sauce does not burn on the ground of the pot. It should cook, but only so much, that it does not burn. If you can, make an agreement with somebody else that you cook and he/she does the cleaning up, cause this saucemaking is messy (but well worth it).

So far so good. Now we take care of the dough. You need only this:

- 300 g (10.5821886 ounces) of fine white flour
- 150 ml (0.317006463 Pints) of handwarm water
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/4 of a cube of yeast (about 12 g (0.423287543 ounces))

That's all. Sounds easy, but what is coming up is a little tricky.
First of all: If I say 300 g and 150 ml and so on, I mean it! Don't use more, don't use less. Then you will have no problem.
Ok, crumble the yeast into the water and stir until it has dissolved completely. Then add the oil to the water.
Put the flour and the salt into a bowl, and slowly add the yeast/water/oil. Now knead. You can do it by hand, but I strongly recommend a machine.

Knead it until the dough is absolutely smooth and elastic. With the machine this will take five to ten minutes.
One more thing. People often wonder why there is no sugar in the dough. Answer: These light doughs don't need that. The yeast takes the starch from the flour to develop. If you use sugar, your dough will become brown and burns more quickly and we certainly don't want that to happen.
Now put a damp towel over the bowl with the yeast and put everything in a warm place for about an hour. If you can heat up your oven to 30°C (86°F), then do so and put it in there. Otherwise heat the oven up to the lowest temperature possible and turn it then off before putting in the bowl. This dough must not be heated up over 50°C (122°F) because the yeast will then become inactive. Leave the dough untouched for about an hour.

Fine, while the dough is safe and warm and the sauce (stir it) is happily bubbling along, we can start to prepare the stuff we want to put on the pizza. As you know, there is lots of stuff possible. I chose this:

This is a big onion poultry salami, fresh champignons (careful with those: They contain much water and are well able to drown your pizza), a red pepper, slices of turkey breast, ham cubes and of course cheese.
Now, I use to cut most of this stuff up to little bits because big pieces shield the heat from the lower layers, and that is not good. If you however insist on onion rings rather than cubes, that is fine, too. We also do have a little trick in store for transporting the heat - but I'll come to that later. For me, it has to at least look like this:

Fine, now that that's done, we take care of the dough. If the hour has passed, take it out and remove the towel. The dough should have gained size considerably.

Before we continue there, there might be an extra step you have to take if you have a baking stone. This thing takes about an hour to heat up, so put it in the oven and heat it up to as hot as possible, using top and bottom heating. 250°C to 280°C (482°F to 536°F) are fine. Put the stone in the middle or just below the middle of the oven.

Now back to the dough. Flatten it out a bit (but make it round) and put it on some flour that you beforehand spread on the kitchen counter. Turn the dough around so that it has flour on both sides and won't stick to the counter.

Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough to a disc with approximately 33cm (12.992126 inch) (but it has to be round). If you want to put your pizza on a simple baking tin, you might prefer another form so that the dough fits well.

Now we give it a good rim. Fold 1cm (0.393700787 inch) back to the centre of the disc and push your finger harrrrrd into the dough every centimetre (0.393700787 inch) round the disc. It should look like this:

Now we have to wait for the sauce to finish or the stone to become hot. Whatever happens last. Your sauce should be nearly done now. Try it and remove the leaf. You might have to add some salt or pepper.
While waiting you might want to teach the dog some tricks.

Ugh - mine charges its laser-defence so I better leave it alone.
Ok, the stone is hot (or your oven has reached the desired temperature if you use a baking tin) and the sauce has lost so much water that a stroke with a spoon does not flow back at once.

Then take three to four tablespoons full of sauce and put it into a freezer bag. Close the bag with a firm knot and put it into a bowl or your sink, filled with cold water.

We need to cool down the sauce, because you cannot put hot things on the dough. It takes only a few seconds to cool down, if you knead the bag a little. Then cut off one corner of the bag and put the sauce on the dough.

Be as quick as possible from now on.
Spread the sauce.

Put the onions on it, followed by the turkey breast stripes.

Now the ham and pepper cubes.

The mushrooms.

The salami.

And the cheese.

I always put some more oregano on it. Looks nice and tastes good.
Finally you add three to four tablespoons of olive oil that you trickle evenly all over the pizza. It will become hot and everything on the topping will start to boil propperly.
Put your pizza into the oven now.

Observe closely what happens. The cheese has to boil. If it does and you have not too much other stuff on the pizza, it is probably done (might only take 5 minutes). If you like your pizza crisp or/and have some more toppings on it, it can take up to 10 or 12 minutes. Check, if the dough gets dark underneath. A golden colour is ok, but brown is already too dark.
Here we go:

Cut it up and present it. You worked hard for this moment.

Have fun.
If you read all of this: Respect!
If you merely watched the pictures: This is not the fucking Playboy, you crétin. Razz

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

Tons of advertising of kitchen products here...
Laughing

That sauce looks nice in the plastic bag, like blood. I like blood.
What is the name of the dog?

Anyways the pizza looks almost as fantastisch as my pizzas usually, you are learning triff!
Wink

How much it did take? 2 hours?
Sheesh!
Anyways, might try this later (without the dough), I have great mushrooms to put into it.
Very Happy

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http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3332770
C4 Corvette, love her till my death.

	Bionic Commando wrote:
	Tons of advertising of kitchen products here...

Hmm, right. I like gadgets.

	Bionic Commando wrote:
	What is the name of the dog?

Nelly. Normally she looks like this:

	Bionic Commando wrote:
	How much it did take? 2 hours?

More like three, but I forgot to say that you can fill the rest of the sauce in bags (3 tablespoons each), too and freeze it. The sauce is the most time consuming part. One pot of sauce is enough for at least 5 pizzas.

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

	TriffiD wrote:
	Nelly. Normally she looks like this:

As was expected..bitch Exclamation

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"I´M NOT CRAZY
My Reality Is Just Different Than Yours"

So you have two bitches in the house then.
Twisted Evil

And as we can see again, beer bottles can be used even empty!
Beer ritches our puny lives in so many ways.
One of our only true friends.

_________________

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3332770
C4 Corvette, love her till my death.