I am so tired of weighing everything to make western dishes. A cup of this, a teaspoon of that, arghhhh. I wanted cooking to come naturally, the way you never measure the jeera dhaniya when you make kuali ko tarkari. So I just decided to assemble the ingredients and wing it! And I actually ended up with the best pizza that I have ever made. So here goes an easy pizza recipe for lazy folks like me!
Ingredients in clockwise order:
1. Flour
2. Sugar
3. Water
4. Salt
5. Yeast dissolved in warm water
6. Oil
First of all, take some yeast and dissolve in warm water. Let it stay for five minute while you sprinkle oil, sugar and salt (more sugar than salt) into the flour in reasonable quantities. Finally, pour in the yeasty water as well. Begin kneading the dough. Pour water as and when needed. The dough should be smooth and soft, like for making parathas. Knead it well.
Of course, I still have to vaguely follow the directions for what to do, even if I do not measure the ingredients. So after kneading the dough, lightly coat it in oil. The recipes say to cover it with moist cloth, but since I do not have an unlimited supply of clean rags like my ama does, I make do with paper towels, and it works just great! Keep in room temperature for at least a couple hours. It is desirable to let the dough ferment overnight, but I cooked after 4 hours and it turned out yummy. After a few hours, you can wrap it up in plastic and refrigerate it. It will continue to ferment in the fridge. You can keep it for up to 3 days.
When you are ready to make the piza, start the sauce (yes, we are making everything from scratch, no cheating, i.e., store bought pizza sauce). This sauce is actually so lovely that you might be tempted to finish it before it reaches the pizza :)
First of all, puree some tomatoes. (Ok , you may use canned tomato puree instead of grinding fresh tomatoes). But if you are pureeing fresh tomatoes, add half a chilli pepper too. Trust me on this one, piro pizza is great :) Set tomato puree to boil in a pan, adding water if the canned puree is too thick. Add these things to the pan:
1. Ground garlic
2. Salt
3. Sugar (again, more than salt)
4. Just a dash of olive oil
5. Just a sprinkle of ground cheese, preferably parmesan
6. Ground black pepper
7. Oregano leaves
Let the sauce simmer for a few minutes
Use this time to chop up topping. Of course, topping can be anything you want, but here are my favorite vegetarian toppings: pineapple (of course!!!!), spinach, mushroom, onion.
At the point, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Take the dough in your hand and knead it for a minute. The dough should have risen to double its size, but once you knead it, the size vanishes. Start expanding the dough by hand, slowly increasing its size until you get the desired size and shape. Thickness is important too. I like thin crust pizza and try to stretch the dough as far as I can without breaking it. You can also set the dough on the baking try and then stretch it into shape.
Take your baking tray and line with aluminum foil, that will prevent your tray from getting burnt. Of course, a pizza stone is better if you wanna go all professional, but since I do not have one, I make do with aluminum foil on a normal baking tray.
Line the aluminium foil with flour, so that the pizza doesn't stick tot he bottom. Then place you dough over it. You can continue to shape your dough if it has shrunk or acquired holes in moving.
Ladle sauce over the dough. Remember to raise the crust higher than the pizza, else your sauce will run out like mine :P
Sprinkle grated cheese over the sauce, generously. And I mean Generously, completely obscuring the sauce. Mozzarella and Parmesan are recommended, and in my experience, a mixture of them works best. Can't wait to come home and try local Yak cheese, which I am suspecting will work best on our palates.
Finally, add the toppings. The mistake I made here is putting the spinach on top, which was burnt to a crisp. What I learnt from the experience is to put the fragile items like spinach and mushroom at the bottom, and then sprinkle bulkier items like onions and pineapple on top. You can even add a thin layer of cheese after the delicate topping like spinach, and this method was actually the yummiest because the cheese seemed to be spinach flavored. Though I like to have a LOT of topping, somewhere I read that adding too much topping prevents the bread base from rising. So, use your discretion on this one.
Finally, slide the pizza into the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Check after 20 minutes though, just to be sure, and if the crust starts turning brown, then it's time to take it out!! Serve hot, or cold! :)
Doesn't this look like the yummiest pizza ever?
I admit it's not round, but who cares? I wanna make yummy pizza, not pretty pizza :)
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