Home Made Pizzas (May 2009)

        Who DOESN'T love pizza? Especially home made pizza. If you have the patience to make your own pizza dough, nothing beats home made pizza! None of that crappy premade biscuity bases (thought I am guilty of trying to use them but they all seem pretty ordinary, the ones I have tried anyway). But for those non cooking/non foodie friends you can buy a premade pizza base, or any kind of leb/pita bread will suffice - it's all about the topping! The great thing about home made is that you can put absolutely anything you want on it. So you can be either as boring as you want or as gourmet/outrageous as you want. I'm actually disappointed in myself that I havn't made home made pizzas again since May last year =(.

        I absolutely love anything freshly baked, and bread is one of them. Pizza dough is quite easy to make as long as you follow the instructions and work it through properly and let it rest and rise. I can't even remember which recipe it was that I used but if you google basic pizza dough I am sure there will be numerous recipes that come up. I usually pick the one that has the least ingredients and steps. The important thing is that you knead it well (needs to be quite elasticised) and let it rest well (until it doubles in size).

This is what the consistency of the dough should look like.

        I just grabbed balls of dough and rolled it out on a floured bench. Wasn't game to try and do the pizza base toss.

        The colours of Italy, baby bocconcini, cherry tomatoes, pancetta (or could have just been fancy ham from Woolies Deli), basil and mozarella. I made my own tomato sauce base using a can of tomato puree and mixing through some sauteed diced onion, garlic and mixed herbs in it. There is really know right or wrong way to top a pizza though try not to overload it. Once done put it in the oven for about 15-20 minutes at about 200 degrees and you have a piping hot delicious pizza created by you!

        Probably should have put the Basil on after cooking but it tasted fine, just looked a little blackened.

        My version of a Vegetarian Delux =p. Tomato sauce, mozarella, sliced mushroom, cherry tomatoes, basil, pineaple and grilled eggplant (I cheated and bought the eggplant pregrilled from Woolies Deli and pineapple was canned).

The cooked "Vegetarian Delux" =D. I was trying to be "healthy".

        For the sibblings who arn't at all into vegies and weird toppings I made a gourmet Hawaiin and also a BBQ chicken pizza for them. I had bought so many ingredients for the pizzas that there was enough to make more pizzas the next day. I found that the dough I made the day after turned out better, could be that I kneaded the dough more and it was also a warmer day. Home made pizza is the best.