Dough for 4 Pizzas (the dough lasts a week in the fridge - might as well make a few):
600g (2.5cups) Warm Water
1tbsp Honey or Sugar
1 Packet (or 1tsp) of Yeast (If using Sourdough Starter, omit 1/2 of the weight of your starter of water and flour each)
4tbsp Olive Oil
950g (~7 cups) Plain Flour
1 tbsp Salt
Semolina flour for dusting - can add some herbs to this too.
For Pizza Sauce:
2 Tins Whole Plum Tomatoes (ideally) or Chopped Tomatoes (it'll do)
2tbsp Olive Oil
1 Onion
3 Garlic Cloves
2 Bay Leaves
2 tbsp Dried Oregano
1 tbsp Dried Basil
1 tbsp Dried Thyme
Dash of Wourchsheschershire Sauce (you know the one I mean - quite optional if making this vegan)
Salt to taste
To Bake: Ideally bake at the highest temperatures your oven can reach until the crust is cooked. For myself this is around 8 minutes at 250°C, but every oven is different. Lower temperatures will result in lots of moisture being lost from the crust and it having a cracker texture. If the toppings aren't charred to your liking when the crust is complete, stick on the grill element. If using an uncooked sauce with many toppings, I'd suggest a temperature of around 225°C to avoid a sopping wet pizza.
How to Make:
1. To begin the dough, ideally start the night before, although this can be a few hours before you make pizza if you want to be all spontaneous like that. Add the water, sugar/honey, yeast and olive oil to a bowl and mix thoroughly and leave the yeast to activate for a few minutes (optional).
2. After the yeast has had a bubble bath in sugary water, add the flour and add the salt last over the flour, to make sure the yeast are not subject to harsh amounts of salt all at once. You can then mix it all together until it forms a dough. If it doesn't come together at all, add some more flour but do not add much, the next step will help it develop.
3. Leave the dough on the counter for 30 minutes, this will make the kneading much easier as the dough is much less tacky.
4. At this point, start on a sauce for the pizza. You can either go with a cooked or uncooked pizza sauce, I am personally a fan of cooked pizza sauce as it gets rid of a lot of moisture meaning you can cook the pizza on a higher heat and add more toppings without the pizza becoming very soggy in a home oven. What I recommend as a first step is separating the tomato juice from the chopped or whole plum tomatoes, straining them over a bowl to separate the tomato juice from the actual tomatoes. The tomato juice is added to bulk the tin out and is very sour [taste some], so using as little as possible in a sauce both shortens down the sauce cooking time and produces a sweeter sauce. If you want to make an uncooked tomato sauce, crush tomatoes, add herbs, a bit of olive oil and some salt, add that to the pizza (make sure to add very little moisture and possibly cook on 225 instead of 250 to give more time for moisture to leave.)
5. Dice the onions, garlic, and if adding fresh herbs (i'd suggest using fresh oregano, basil and thyme if you have it available, but this recipe was made factoring in that most people just have dried), cut them up too.
6. Heat pot with oil to medium heat and add onions / salt. Cook until just showing signs of any browning and immediately add tomatoes, garlic, bay leaves, all of the herbs (unless using fresh herbs in which you should add these off of the heat at the end), and the worchsenehshire sauce. If the sauce is too thick, add some of the reserved tomato juice. Cook it on a simmer until it is your desired consistency and tastes like some nice pizza sauce.
7. Return to the dough; It is time to knead. This can be done by lifting and folding and stretching the dough. As long as you are stretching the dough, folding it, and then stretching in a different direction, you are kneading correctly. I like to do this in the air over the bowl by wetting my hands. If the dough becomes too difficult, add a little bit more flour, less is more. The dough will become super stretchy at some point. When it is, add it back to a clean, oiled bowl. At this point you may divide it up into 4 balls and add a ball into 4 separate oiled containers.
8. Leave the dough to rise at room temperature for around 3 hours, this is called bulk fermentation and is where the yeast divides and eats the sugar to make babies and carbon dioxide. After this point you can then either put the dough in the fridge to store for 1 week, or use it to make pizza immediately. It may become better over the course of a week in the fridge as a slow ferment changes the flavour.
9. Stretch / roll out the pizza dough on a semolina floured (this can be regular flour but it is not very tasty to bite into) pizza peel or chopping board. Once the pizza dough is stretched out, dock the centre with a fork, to prevent any bubbles from developing within the centre of the pizza. Next, add sauce, cheese (mozzarella pressed to remove moisture with a paper towel - pre-shredded mozzarella has starch coating it that means it melts terribly, you can mitigate this by washing and drying it however but I wouldn't recommend) and add toppings (absolutely whatever you want). Add a drizzle of olive oil around the crust when assembled and transfer to an already hot oven with a pizza steel / stone that has been preheating in the oven. This should be fairly easy to do if your pizza is dusted with semolina adequately, but add more and shuffle it around until it moves on the peel/board if it refuses to leave.
10. Enjoy your pizza, drizzle with some sauce like BBQ if that tickles your pickle. If you made a pineapple pizza you understand flavour well, it just works. Leftover dough you don't want to turn into pizza can be easily made into doughballs by rolling in semolina and cooking in the oven or airfryer at 200 celcius. An easy recipe for pizza sauce, if you don't have it on you, is mayo, lemon juice (or some other acid), garlic (granules or fresh diced) and some of the pizza herbs, mixed in quantities that make it taste good to yourself. Add hot sauce, see if I care.