Pizza as simple and hot as hell

I’ll be honest, pizza dough was the bane of my life for ages. The stuff of nightmares. I tried all sorts of recipes (mainly with fresh yeast rather than dried), and not only did making the starter always make me feel queasy, the results were variable (read: crap). Let’s start with the sort of base I like, though. That matters, because the recipe below has been tested against my own tastes. My simple, primitive, peasant tastes in food.

I like a thin base, not soft, but not hard and brittle like a Polish Christmas wafer either. It took a lot of trial and error to get to the dough I’m showing you here. But I finally found my kind, like the bases you get in good Italian pizzerias in Poland. Truth be told, I’ve never managed to recreate the base from an Italian pizzeria in actual Italy. The dough recipe below is not my own, of course. I nicked it from the website of Magda Gessler. It’s the dough that turns out right when I knead it with my well-practised, chubby hands.

But you know full well the base isn’t everything. Next up is the tomato sauce. The one below really is my own creation. The toppings come third, though without them my pizza wouldn’t be hot as hell. If you’re not into heat, leave off the jalapeños and skip the hot chilli in the sauce. And remember, you don’t put ketchup on pizza, not even in my primitive kitchen. OK, here comes what’s probably the longest ingredients list on this site.

At a glance:

Prep time: 75 minutes (unfortunately the dough has to be kneaded and left to rise. While it rises you’ve got plenty of time to get the toppings ready or play a few games of FIFA 2014)

Baking time: about 12 to 18 minutes

Oven temperature: 230 degrees Celsius

Serves: 4

How many calories: let’s not go into it. A hell of a lot (if you’re on a diet, trying to lose weight or “watching your figure with Ms Chodakowska”, you can have a piece measuring no more than 5 square centimetres)

Ingredients for a pizza that’s simple as hell and hot as hell:

Dough:

• 340 grams of wheat flour (a little less than half a standard packet)
• a packet of dried yeast (I much prefer yeast in this form. For one thing, it doesn’t stink)
•  1.5 teaspoons of sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons of salt
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• a glass of water

Sauce:

• a tablespoon of olive oil (first pressing, obviously)
• two peeled tomatoes
• a carton of tomato passata (the standard 500 gram one)
• a teaspoon of sugar
• two pinches of salt (“pinches” is a fun word, but as everyone knows, in the kitchen it’s better to be alone when you… cook)
• fresh thyme (a few sprigs)
• ground pepper
• ground hot chilli (skip it if you just like things simple, not spicy)

Toppings:

• pepperoni sausage
• ordinary salami (I usually buy Texas, the one in the little denim jacket, or the crescent-shaped salami)
• pickled (as in marinated) green jalapeño pepper (skip it if you just like things simple, not spicy)
• Camembert
• black olives
• mozzarella (the firm kind, not the one in brine. You can buy it ready-grated, though I prefer to do the grating myself)
• two sprigs of fresh rosemary (you can do without them, but they make the whole house smell incredible. I love it)

Method (in plain English: get to work, mate):

First you need to knead the dough and that’s the whole trick.

I make the dough following a recipe that’s apparently Ms Gessler’s. I dissolve the wretched powdered yeast in a glass of water and leave it for 10 minutes (no bloody idea why). In a deep bowl (I’ve got a nice steel one my parents gave me once) I mix the so-called dry ingredients: flour, sugar and salt. I pour in the yeast. Before getting my hands in there, I stir it all with a big spoon so I don’t get plastered in dough straight away. Once it starts looking fairly uniform, I grab it and knead. I have my own way of manhandling it, tossing it up and punching the compact ball with my fist. The idea is to have smooth, elastic dough after about 10 minutes. The best test of how well it’s come together is to stretch it. If it doesn’t fall apart too quickly, you’re doing fine. I leave it for 10 minutes, then pour in the olive oil and give it another good going-over for several minutes.

Then I divide the dough into portions. How many depends on how big an oven I’m using (I sometimes give travelling “performances” in other people’s kitchens) and how big I want the pizzas. At home, in a standard oven, I usually get three large rectangular pizzas from this much dough. Next I leave the dough to rise for 45 minutes in a bowl covered with a slightly damp tea towel in a warm place. My oven has a “dough proving” setting and I must say it works well. The “under the radiator” setting works too.

While the dough is rising you can get on with the sauce.

I heat the olive oil in a small pot. When it’s hot enough, I pour in the whole carton of passata and add the peeled tomatoes. I add the seasonings and stir. And that’s pretty much it. Except that

a) you need to stir often

b) the “flame” shouldn’t be too high (on my induction hob that’s 4 out of 10)

c) it bubbles and splashes like mad while it cooks (I’ve never managed to avoid it)

As for the thyme, of course I add the leaves, not the whole sprigs. If it bubbles too much, I pour in a little water. I cook it until the sauce has the consistency of a paste, no longer watery and really intense. Just right for spreading. It takes no more than 45 minutes (the time it takes the dough to rise). I set it aside to cool a little.

Now for the final operation: I make the pizza.

Heat the oven to 230 degrees Celsius (do it now, because the oven needs to be hot from the start. It mustn’t be heating up with the pizza inside). I give the risen dough a light knead and shape a base on the baking tray from the oven. I use my hands and a little rolling pin. Roll it out evenly to about 3 to 4 millimetres thick. If it tears, I’m afraid that means the dough got screwed up. You should be able to flip it over and back again without it sticking to the tray. Once the base is ready on the tray, use a spoon to spread the sauce right over it without piling too much on. Then I arrange the toppings however I fancy and give everything a generous sprinkling of grated mozzarella. Into the oven it goes. After 12 minutes I start keeping an eye on it. If the mozzarella hasn’t melted yet (and isn’t starting to brown) and the edges are still pale, I wait for them to take on some colour. When it looks right, I take it out and make the next one. One devilishly simple, devilishly hot pizza, done. Enjoy!