Preparation time: 2.5 hrs
Cooking time: 5-10 mins
Serves: 4-5
Like Mama Used To Make!
For the Pizza Base-> Mix the ingredients together by hand. Make sure you don’t add too much water (mixture will become overly sticky). Knead together for 2 minutes, cover the dough and let it rise for 1 1/2 - 2 hours (or until double size). Punch it down and push out the air bubbles. Form the dough into a large ball, then cut it into 4-5 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, dust each with flour, store under a damp towel (for about an hour). This will enable the dough to become soft and elastic, so that they can be easily stretched into a thin crust pizza.
For the Tomato Sauce -> You can use canned San Marzano Tomatoes (Pomodoro Pellati) to create a wonderful, and simple pizza tomato base (I believe tesco now have these fresh on the vine). Use a potato masher to get a good sauce consistency. Don’t use a food processor or hand mixer, as these will break up the seeds and give the sauce a bitter flavour. Experiment with the sauce cooked and uncooked.
Assembling Your Pizza-> Dust your hands with flour, and take a Pizza Ball. Gently shape the ball into a flat disk, and then start pulling, stretching and turning the disk in the air to make the dough thinner and thinner. Try to keep working in a circle to keep the thickness of the dough consistent, avoiding thick and thin spots. At the point where you cannot get the dough thinner without making a hole, put your pizza on a floured work surface, and use your fingertips to work out the thick spots by pushing the dough to the outside. Ideally the pizza base will be as thick as a credit card and about 10" in diameter. Tip - the more you handle the dough the tougher it will become.
Tips on Cooking-> Ideally you would use an authentic wood burning pizza oven, which will cook the pizza in about 2 minutes. The second best option would be to purchase a pizza stone. The ket to success is to get your pizza stone hot. That means heating your regular oven to its highest setting, and heating the stone for at least 45 minutes. Slide the pizza base onto the stone, and cook for approx 5-7 mins (depending on base thickness).