Tips of Making Perfect Pizza at Home in 2020
It is one of the most famous dishes in the world, certainly, the one that together with pasta represents Italy all over the world. It also has become one of the most popular restaurant foods in Bangladesh for a couple of decades. We are talking about something that has a lot of verities, steaming, simple, seasoned, gourmet, sweet, there is no limit to what a pizza chef can do with a disc of dough. Today we are going to learn some of the tricks and tips of making perfect pizza at home.
Preparing Pizza Dough
Start dissolving the yeast in a little water at room temperature (25 ° C would be perfect), and make sure to add a pinch of sugar. Sugar activates yeast faster and better. Place the flour in a heap on a pastry board or in a bowl. A little at a time pour the water with the yeast and try to mix everything. Then add the other water slowly.
Pour the last part and knead the dough until you get a homogeneous mixture. Add the oil a little at a time and continue to knead the dough, folding the dough on itself. Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover it with a tea towel or plastic wrap, and let it rise in a dry place (the oven will do just fine) in an hour and a half.
How to Make Yeast-Free Pizza Dough?
To prepare the yeast-free pizza for two people you will need 300 grams of flour, 160 ml of natural mineral water, 1 teaspoon of salt, 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Knead by adding salt, water, and oil to the flour arranged in a fountain. Start working the ingredients until you get a smooth and elastic dough.
After letting the result rest for at least an hour, flour the top with the semolina and knead the dough divided into two until you get a thin round base. Bake in the oven, on the lowest shelf, at 250 ° C. Then season to taste and cook for another 8-10 minutes.
How to Season Pizza
Once the dough is obtained, once it has risen, let’s move on to explain how to season the pizza. First, you have to roll it out. Once you have a disc with a thickness of one, maximum of two centimeters, you can proceed with the filling. The edge must be slightly raised, in order to “frame” the sauce.
Among the best pizza recipes to make at home, there are many that include the addition of ingredients even at the exit of the pizza. For example, vegetarian pizza should first be cooked with tomato and mozzarella, and then garnished outside the oven with grilled vegetables and basil.
How to Cook Pizza at Home?
Baking pizza at home is a little different than using a wood oven. First, we need to make sure that the oven is very hot. Set the temperature to 220 degrees. Then, after having rolled out and seasoned your pizza, put it in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes. To avoid “drying out” some delicate ingredients such as mozzarella, add them to the pizza halfway through cooking.
If the Pizza Does Not Rise
There can be several reasons that explain a pizza that does not rise. The temperature, for example. If it is below 28 degrees, the yeast does not activate and dies immediately. There may also be a problem with the hydration of the yeast: if you use it fresh, this must be dissolved in part of the water, which must be lukewarm, not cold or hot.
Are you sure you added the salt at the right time? This ingredient has a yeast inhibitory function, so it should never be put together in the recipe. The timing of adding yeast to the dough is also important. This is added together with the other dry ingredients. If you add it when the dough is already formed, it may not blend well.
If the Pizza Is Hard
Pizza can be hard due to a cooking error, but also due to the wrong proportions between the ingredients. Too much flour can damage the dough.
If the pizza is chewy
Sometimes it can happen to find an imperfect result on the plate and to wonder: why is pizza rubbery? The first element to evaluate is the tension of the gluten mesh. Probably during the dough, it did not activate well and therefore affected the almost non-existent alveolation.
However, there may also be an error in adding water or poor maturation of the dough. Even choosing the right flour can give life to a chewy pizza.
When you make pizza Margherita, do not cover it immediately with mozzarella: there is a risk that it will overcook, becoming dry and dark. Better to add it towards the end of cooking, when the dough has swollen well, and leave it in the oven only for the time necessary to make it soft and stringy. So if you have read this article attentively, and if you remember the tips, you are going to make a good pizza for sure at home.
