How to make the best homemade pizza

We’ve been making homemade pizzas since 2012 now and our kids think our recipe is better than any restaurant pizza including Milanos! On top of that it produces substantially less packaging than ready-made pizza.

Are you ready to become a pizza king / queen?

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How to Make the Best Pizza Base

Ingredients

• 225g ’00’ flour (pasta flour)
• 225g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 15ml of olive oil
• 7g of dried active yeast or 20g of fresh yeast*, which we ‘activated’ in 280ml of warm water and 1 teaspoon of sugar. I find mixing 80ml of boiled water with 200ml of tap water gets the right temperature

Method

Activate the yeast as stated on the yeast packet. This typically takes 15 minutes. (You can skip this step if you’re using fast acting yeast).

Mix together the plain, 00 flour and salt (and yeast if you’re using fast-acting yeast). The pizza base is even nicer with only 00 flour but it makes it more expensive, and we found the 50/50 mix is fine.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour / salt mixture. Add the olive oil and enough water to bring the mixture together. I’ve found that this is approx. 100ml but test as you go.

Mix everything together with a wooden spoon or by hand until it starts to come together and away from the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for approx. 5 minutes. Place the mixture back in the bowl, cover with damp tea towel or plate, and place the dough in a warm spot to prove until it doubles in size – typically 60-90mins. If it’s cold you can prove the dough in an oven that’s been switched to 150 degrees Celsius for 60seconds.

To cook your pizza you’ll need to pre-heat your oven to its highest setting, which takes a bit of time so I’d suggest turning your oven on approx. 10-15 minutes before you start rolling out the pizza bases. Also place the baking sheet, pizza stone or pizza base that you’re using in the oven as it pre-heats.

Once the dough has been proven, knock the pizza dough back to release the air and divide the mixture into two or three pieces and roll each piece into a ball. If you divide into two rather than three you’ll get a thicker base. (You can freeze the mixture now if you want the pizza base for another day.)

Roll each ball out on a floured surface until 1/4″ thick and approx 300mm x 300mm. When the oven has reached the highest temperature, remove the preheated baking tray, pizza stone or pizza tray, sprinkle some polenta, semolina or flour onto it and place the pizza base on top of the hot stone or tray.

Partially cook the pizza base for about 5 minutes before adding the toppings.

How to Make the Best Pizza

If you can spread this awesome homemade pizza sauce on top of the partially cooked pizza base. If you’re short on time you can get away with using passatta or blended tomatoes (from a tin) on the base. We make the pizza sauce ahead of time in large quantities and freeze in portions in glass jars..

Sprinkle on your toppings of choice. We typically use cheddar cheese, pepperoni, oregano and mozzarella – or your topping of choice. Careful of too many raw vegetables as they can make the pizza wet!

Also dry fresh mozzarella well before applying them to the pizza. Otherwise they can generate pools of moisture, making the base soggy.

Place in the oven for 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

More Staple Food Recipes

You can find some more of my staple food recipes here

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* I trialled fresh yeast which I can get in 100g blocks in waxed paper in the fridge of my local Polish store. I cut it into 20g chunks and froze it, taking out a block as needed and popping it in the warm water. It took a bit longer to activate but pizza dough still came out fine. I eventually switched back to dried yeast because I wasn’t saving that much packaging by using fresh, plus there was the added energy of keeping it refrigerated in the store and frozen at home.