Takeaway pizza is nothing compared to a proper homemade one, but getting it right can be difficult. If you’ve tried it a couple of times before and it hasn’t gone that well, you might be thinking about giving up and ordering one in next time. But before you do that, try it one more time and use these great tips for making the best homemade pizza.
Always Make Your Own Dough
You can get ready made pizza bases from the supermarket which are fine if you want to save time but if you really want the best results, you’ve got to make your own dough. You can find a great recipe here for the perfect pizza dough. Taking your time is key here; you need to make sure that you’re kneading it properly for as long as the recipe requires. If you skip that step or just think to yourself that it’ll probably be fine if you just do it for a couple of minutes, your dough isn’t going to rise properly. It’s also important that you allow it enough time to rise, as the recipe states, unless you want to end up with a dense, heavy dough.
If you’re short on time but you still want to make a good homemade pizza, using yoghurt is a great shortcut. All you need is the flour and then add spoonfuls of yoghurt one at a time until it has the consistency of a dough. Then knead it for 5 minutes and you’re ready to roll it out. It’s a great trick for making a quick dough as long as you’re not cooking vegan food.
Toss The Dough
When you see the pros tossing dough in the air to shape it, you might wonder what the point is. Why can’t they just roll it? Rolling the dough out will still give you a good pizza if you can’t manage the toss properly, it’s a skill you need to practice. But if you can master it, you’ll get a better crust doing it that way rather than rolling it out with a rolling pin.
Pre Cook The Crust
This is a great tip that helps stop your pizza from being soggy. People often end up putting too many toppings on and the bottom of the crust doesn’t crisp up nicely. You can get around that by stretching your dough over a pan and cooking it for a few minutes. When it starts to bubble and get golden brown on the bottom, take it out and set it aside while you sort the rest of the toppings out.
Use A Proper Pizza Oven
This is, of course, only possible if you’ve got the space to put in a pizza oven. But you can make a pizza oven in the back garden fairly easily. The results that you get from a pizza oven are so much better than a traditional oven, especially if you use proper pizza oven wood to fire it. They burn longer and hotter than normal firewood so they’re better for cooking.
Take Time With Your Sauce
The tomato sauce is probably the most important element of the pizza after the dough. It’s the base for all of your other flavours so you need to take your time with it. Don’t just get a jar of passata and slap some on there. Get a can of tomatoes, some garlic and some herbs in a pan and cook it down for a while, the longer the better. Once it’s thick and sticky, you can start putting it on your dough. You can find a great recipe for pizza sauce here, but you should try to experiment with it and make it your own.
Poach Toppings In Olive Oil
This isn’t an essential step but it really helps you to take your pizza to the next level. If you poach the ingredients in some olive oil before you put them on the pizza, you can make sure that everything is cooked quickly and you don’t risk over cooking your pizza base. It also adds a depth of flavour that you wouldn’t get otherwise, especially if you use some oil flavoured with garlic or herbs.
Don’t Go Overboard With Toppings
When you’re making your own pizza, it’s very easy to get carried away with toppings and start loading everything you have on there. That’s not the way to go. You’ll end up with a big mess of flavours that don’t work well together and if you overload the pizza, it’ll be more likely to go soggy.
If you use these basic tips, you can make incredible homemade pizza every single time.
*Collaborative post*
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