Homemade Pizza Recipe

HOMEMADE PIZZA RECIPE (Yield: 2 pizzas, Time: 1 hour )

This recipe is primarily for readers who are young male university students in the UK living on pizza. The idea that I have readers who are spending their food money on expensive, second-rate pizza when they could very easily make their own cheap, amazing pizza disturbs me greatly.

If you have no cooking utensils at all, which is sometimes the case with young male university students in the UK, then you need the following to make cheap, amazing pizza:

UTENSILS

- a large bowl (metal is good)

- a cup measure for liquids

- a scales

- measuring spoons

- 2 baking trays/cookie sheets

- a spoon

- plate

- a clean towel

- rolling pin (or wine bottle full of water with a cork firmly back in, if desperate)

- baking paper (optional, but highly recommended) 

- a sharp knife

You can find all these things very cheaply in a Poundsavers or some other junk shop. Or just ask your mother, who will be delighted that you are cooking for yourself. Just don't tell her it's for pizza.

I'm presuming you have access to an oven. If you don't have your own oven, I suppose you could ask a neighbour if you can put your pizzas in her oven for ten minutes. 

INGREDIENTS

Dough:

1 package of yeast out of the box of instant yeast

1 tablespoon of sugar (or tiny packet of sugar you saved from Costa Coffee)

4 oz (200 mL) warm water

300 grams strong (i.e. bread) flour 

1 teaspoon of salt (or three little packets of salt you saved from wherever)

olive oil (optional)

Topping:

two balls of basic economy mozzarella cheese (44 p each at Tesco)

packet of cheap German salami (£1 at Tesco--you'll find more stuff for that price at Aldi or Lidl)

two or three mushrooms (pennies)

tomato paste (from a tube)

black pepper, dried basil, dried oregano (all optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

Dough first.

1. Put the sugar at the bottom of the measuring cup and pour in warm water to the "4 oz" mark. Stir with the spoon. Dry the spoon.

2. Slice open the packet of yeast and sprinkle the yeast on top of the sugary warm water. Put the measuring cup aside.

3. Pour the flour and salt into the bowl (remember 300 g flour, just a teaspoon of salt) and mix well, so the salt disappears.

4. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeasty-sugar water and a big glug of olive oil.

5. Stir so you have a damp, stiff dough, all flour incorporated. 

6. Using the inside of the bowl, make a big dough ball. 

7. Sprinkle flour on your CLEAN table top or counter, and then knead the big dough ball for three minutes. Kneading basically means to squish half of it with the bottom of the palms of your hands, flip it over and squish it again. Flip, squish, flip, squish. Three minutes of this nonsense.

8. Divide the big dough ball into two and roll them into two smaller dough balls. Sprinkle a little flour on the plate and put the dough balls on it. Cover them with the towel and put the plate somewhere warm. 

9. Wait 45 minutes to an hour. 

10. Your dough balls will have expanded and the room will smell like bread, which is a very good thing.  Take each dough ball in turn and roll it very thinly on the floury counter or table with the rolling pin. If you can be bothered (or can afford the extra money), rolling it out on baking paper saves you much hassle. You get baking paper where you get plastic wrap and tin foil. 

11. When each ball is as flat and big as you can make it (circular or square, it does not matter), slip it onto a baking tray/cookie sheet.

Now you can put the toppings on. 

1. Mix the tomato paste with a little bit of oil or water and paint it onto the dough with the back of your spoon.

2. If you want to add dried herbs like basil, sprinkle a little evenly over the tomato paste.

3. Cut the mozzarella balls into circles and put them on the tomato paste.

4. Arrange the German salami on top of and around the mozzarella.

5. Slice the mushrooms and any other topping you want (green onions, red peppers, whatever edible plant substance) and arrange around the salami. 

5. If you have any Parmesan cheese, which is expensive, so you probably don't, grate it on top. 

6. Turn on the grill part of your oven. Put in the first baking tray with an oven mitt. Grill each pizza for about 7-10 minutes, watching them so as to save them if they start to burn. Take each tray out with a baking mitt. Put them on the stove. Turn off the oven. Wearing mitts, carefully side the pizza onto some portable surface to cool a bit. 

Now you have two hot delicious pizzas that will taste better than anything you could have bought from the freezer section of Tesco/Aldi/Lidl for a fraction of the cost---eventually. Naturally buying your utensils will make it more expensive the first time.