Pizza dough (Pasta per pizza)

This is the recipe to make your own pizza at home.

This dough could be freezed with success, just take it out of the freezer the morning for the evening.

Please consider I don't make the classic round-shaped pizza but the one here is called "pizza al taglio" (pizza on a cut, take away) that comes in rectangular baking tin then cutted in squares (as you can see in the picture).

The pizza results soft and not really thin but it's how it's made in Naples, where pizza was born.

You can even make different seasoning in the same tin if they aren't too contrasting (like ham and anchovies).

In the next post I'll give you 3 pizza seasoning that are a family's well kept secret, they probably seem strange or even disgusting but give a try then tell me what you think!

For 4 medium oven tin:

2 cups warm water (if you need more add little by little)

7 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 oz yeast

2 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil + some to grease tin

Melt yeast in a cup of warm water, then mix all the ingredients together little by little, being sure to have a smooth ball of dough (you have to knead for at least 20-25 minutes by hands, if you have a kneader you're lucky, I usually use my beloved bread machine knead program: here is a quite diffused kitchen appliance).

When you have your elastic and smooth dough you can choose: or you stretch it out in the baking tin (grease it with a little olive oil) then cover with a clean kitchen cloth and let it rest for 4-5 hours in a dark room without air draught or you can put the loaf in a bowl, cover with a clean kitchen cloth and follow the same procedure, after 4-5 hours stretch the dough in the tins and let rise for half an hour more in the tin.

The turn out of rising depends a lot from the enviroment, temperature, air humidity: the more you make dough the better you can calibrate the yeast quantity.

When the time for cooking comes preheat the oven at around 520 F°, drizzle the dough with a little extra virgin olive oil, add tomato sauce (if you prepare it 2-3 hours before using canned tomato pulp, salt, a little basil or oreganon-fresh, freezed or dried-, a little garlic -fresh or dried- and some more olive oil it's perfect, no need to cook it ), mozzarella cheese (finely chopped, not sliced) and the seasoning you've choosen (if it's a delicate topping like parma ham or artichoke hearts add it just 2 minutes before removing pizza from the oven, if it's something more resistent or that needs longer cooking like wurstel (frankfurter) put them on before.

The cooking time dipends on the oven: mine is quite new and heat very well so 10-15 minutes are enough; anyway to see if pizza is ready look at borders and use a knife to look at the bottom, if they're gold coloured pizza is ok.