The secret to really good home made pizza

Pizza has to be one of the world's favourite street foods. Has to be. Trouble is, most pizza you buy, it's pretty bad. Especially the pizzas from the big chains. Making your own should be more satisfying, but usually it isn't. That's because getting it right is hard.

The base

Perfecting the base in a domestic oven is quite difficult. Sure, there are other ways. Flat bread, for instance, which to me always seems like a cop out. There are those pre-made bases as well, but they're as expensive as they are terrible. No, the lazy options for pizza bases are universally rubbish.

Luckily, I know how to make the perfect pizza base. And it's dead simple. The following quantity makes enough for two medium-sized pizzas.

Ingredients:

2 cups strong self-raising flour (with some brands, it'll even say 'suitable for pizza' on the packaging), plus extra to dust
200 mL warm water
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp caster sugar
7 g sachet yeast
pinch of salt

In a bowl, combine the self-raising flour, caster sugar, yeast and salt. Form a well with your hands and then pour in the warm water and the olive oil. Bring everything together with your hands. Once you have a rough dough, pick it up and work it in your hands. Pass it from one hand to the other. Stretch it. Squash it. Play with it for a good five minutes. Once it has been kneaded, place it in a second bowl. This one should be clean and lightly greased with a little olive oil. Cover this second bowl with a clean tea towel and place somewhere warm for a hour. If it's a cool day, be creative. Place the bowl in the bathroom, turn on the heat lamp and close the door.

Meanwhile, pre-heat your oven to 230*C. If you have a ceramic or stone slab, place it in the oven now to heat up. If not, find a large, thick oven tray--just don't expect the results to be as good as they would with a slab. Many kitchenware stores now sell dedicated pizza slabs. I picked up one on sale after Christmas for a very reasonable price. Essentially, the theory behind the pizza slabs is this--domestic ovens provide uneven heat. A stone that's been pre-heated, though, it provides a constant, level source of heat. It also absorbs any moisture that leaks from the pizza. An oven tray, whether it's a cheap one from the supermarket or an expensive non-stick one, won't do the first job as well as a stone slab and won't do the second job at all. It's important to pre-heat the stone slab for 15-20 minutes before cooking your pizza. Just before you get ready to cook, though, drop the oven temperature down to 200*C.

Anyway, back to the dough. Remove the tea towel from the bowl. Punch the dough a couple of times to get the air out, then separate the dough into two evenly-sized lumps. Pick up one of the lumps and have a good feel. Is it sticky? If so, sprinkle a little more flour on it. Play with it some more. Keep on adding flour, a little at a time, until it's no longer sticky. When the ball of dough feels okay, plonk it down in the middle of the stone slab or oven tray and begin rolling. To ensure it rolls evenly, change direction frequently. I have a large rolling pin, but I've found my house mate's tiny roti pin is more effective. Roll quickly. Don't worry about making the base a perfect circle. It doesn't matter. Really. The important thing is to make sure the base isn't too thick or thin. If it's too thin, it just won't work properly. After much experimentation, I've found something in the realm of 7 millimetres to be perfect. By the way, you've probably figured this already--if you only have one stone slab, you're going to have to cook the pizzas one at a time.

The sauce

Now, the sauce. A lot of people use tomato paste and wonder why the end result is bad. Tomato paste isn't suited for this purpose. What you're supposed to use is sugo. Sugo, sometimes sold as tomato passata, is pretty much just a tomato puree. For the two bases, a total of 150 mL will be enough. The secret of pizza bases is to not roll them too thin or too thick. And, too, obviously by now, to use one of that stone slabs or at the very least the thickest oven tray you can find.

Basic ingredients:

150 mL tomato passata (aka sugo)
5 balls of boccocini (a mild-flavoured cheese that comes in the form of small balls floating in liquid and is sold in little tubs in delis and supermarkets), cut into slices

To jazz things up a bit, you can add any of the following:

A good pinch of fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
A couple of garlic cloves, finely diced
A splash of Tabasco or similar chilli sauce
A splash of Worcester or other 'barbecue'-type sauce

The base stays the same, but the rest obviously varies based on what you're doing with your pizza. Want to have a fiery pizza coated in hot salami? A few drops of Tabasco mixed in with the sauce would be a nice idea. Want to have a barbecue chicken pizza? You could do the same with Worcester sauce. Remember that if you're making two different pizzas, you might want to divide the 150 mL of sugo into two 75 mL portions, which you can fiddle with separately. Anyway, smear the sugo all over the base. Don't let it get too thick, but ensure the whole base is covered.

The toppings

And here is where I leave you to think for yourself. Coming up with your own combinations of toppings is the fun part, the part that has no rules to it. Wait, there is one rule--don't put too much stuff. Really, 3 or 4 things should be enough. Oh and too, if you're using chicken or beef or bacon or anything like that, you'll have to pre-cook it. If you're specially cooking the meat and not just using leftovers, remember you can and maybe should marinate it in something. Want to do a spicy chicken pizza? Maybe whip up a simple marinade with some freshly ground black pepper and your favourite chilli sauce. Prawns and squid will be okay placed on raw, though.

Some ideas for ingredients:

Alfalfa sprouts
Anchovies
Artichoke hearts
Asparagus
Avocado
Bacon
Bamboo shoots
Barbecue sauce
Bean sprouts
Beef
Blood sausage
Boar
Broccoli
Buffalo
Calamari
Camel
Capers
Capsicum
Carrot
Caviar
Chicken
Chilli
Chilli sauce
Clams
Coriander
Crabmeat
Crayfish
Crocodile
Duck
Egg
Eggplant
Emu
Fish
Goat
Ham
Kangaroo
Lamb
Leek
Lettuce
Liver
Lobster
Morten Bay bugs
Mushroom
Mussels
Nuts
Olives
Onion
Ostrich
Oysters
Panchetta
Prosciutto
Parsley
Peanuts
Pineapple (‘marinated’ in a little brown sugar first)
Pork
Potato
Prawns
Rocket
Rosemary or other fresh herbs
Salami
Salmon (including the smoked variety)
Satay sauce
Sausage
Scallops
Scampi
Shallot
Speck
Spring onion
Sun-dried tomatoes
Tomato
Tuna
Turkey (including smoked breast)
Venison
Yabbies
Zucchini

Remember--don't use too much stuff.

The cooking process

Cook pizzas in the oven at 200*C or until the base is golden and crisp. So long as your dough was floured enough before you rolled it, you should have no problem with the pizza sticking to the base. If you're worried, you can dust the base with a little corn flour or use some baking paper.

Dressing

To finish a pizza, you can 'dress' it with a little sprinkle of extra virgin olive oil, chilli sauce, barbecue sauce or fresh herbs. You could even, if you wanted to be all fancy and if your toppings were appropriate, use some truffle-infused oil. Be sparing with your dressings, particularly the liquid ones. Don't spoil your lovely pizza with oil.