Many housewives prefer pizza to any other pastries. This is because this dish is hearty and tasty, suitable for a quiet family dinner, and for the festive menu. It uses various ingredients: meat, sausage, cheese, mushrooms, fish, vegetables, fresh and pickled. Pizza base can also be prepared according to various recipes. Depending on this, the taste of the finished baking also changes.
So, in Italy, where this dish came from, it is believed that the basis for pizza should be thin, as well as the layer of toppings. To make this dough, you need 175 grams of flour mixed with a teaspoon of dried yeast and a pinch of salt. 125 ml of warm water is combined with a tablespoon of olive oil, the liquid is poured into the dry ingredients, the dough is kneaded. It is transferred to a bowl, lubricated from the outside with oil, covered with cling film and left for 40 minutes. During this time, the dough should increase significantly. After that, the base for pizza is rolled out from it in a thin layer, the ingredients for the filling are placed on top, and everything goes to the oven.
For the dough to rise, there should be no drafts in the room. Also one of the tricks of the housewives: to lubricate the bowl in which the dough is placed with sunflower oil, this contributes not only to the fact that the mass does not stick to the edges, but also that it will increase in size faster. Those who prefer a thin and crispy pizza base are recommended to put 2 baking sheets in the heated oven, top and bottom. It is necessary to bake the dish on the top, at the same time, heat will come from the bottom, so that the dough will bake faster.
For those who love a lush base, the following recipe is recommended. Mix a glass of flour with 3-4 teaspoons of yeast. A spoonful of baking powder and a pinch of salt are added to this. A glass of kefir is slightly heated over a fire, poured into the rest of the ingredients. A couple of spoons of vegetable oil is added here (it is preferable to take olive). The dough is kneaded and left for an hour. Then it is rolled out, greased with tomato sauce, the ingredients for the filling are laid out on top. This dish is baked for 40 minutes in a well-heated oven. According to this recipe, it’s quite simple to make pizza at home, since for the filling you can take almost all of what is currently in the refrigerator. In most cases, they use sausage, mushrooms, olives, pickled cucumbers, meat, fish, etc. The ingredients are sprinkled with grated cheese on top.
The following recipe will help those who do not know how to make a pizza base from shortcrust pastry. For this, half a kilogram of flour is mixed with 50 grams of sugar and a packet of chopped margarine. 2 raw egg yolks and half a glass of sour cream are added here. After the ingredients are mixed, the juice of half a lemon and chopped zest are poured into the dough. The dough is wrapped in parchment paper and can be stored in the refrigerator, it is used as needed. If the flour is not enough to make the mass tight, it is added a little more.
Unleavened pizza dough is made as follows. A tablespoon of sour cream and mayonnaise is mixed with an egg, salt (half a teaspoon) and the same amount of sugar are added. Everything is whipping. A spoonful of soda is placed in a glass of kefir, the resulting mixture is poured into an egg-mayonnaise mass. Flour is spread in small particles until a thick dough is obtained. It is left to “ripen” for several minutes, after which it is used as the basis for baking.
It should be noted that Italian chefs recommends making pizza dough only by hand, without using food processors or similar devices. It is also advised not to use the rolling pin when rolling out the dough, but to “pull” it in the necessary directions until it gets the desired shape.