Make your own pizza at home

Pizzas are complete meals out of a variety of ingredients put together on piece of pastry. You can learn how to make different types and enrich your palate.Net photo

Several years ago, pizzas were regarded as being an exotic meal that along with spaghetti is Italian and strictly found in Italian restaurants or the better hotels.

However, nowadays ,pizzas are a common item to be found in many takeaways in town and who would ever have guessed that this popular Italian pie began its career as a leftover from surplus bread dough?

Needless to say, you cannot even think of making pizza without an oven. The ingredients are inexpensive and readily available in any supermarket or grocery shop. When we are making pizza dough, we mix as for bread but do not let it rise a second time.

Pizza siciliana

It is to the highly developed civilisation of the Chinese that we owe our greatest cookery debt,” says the late great chef James A. Beard.

“The golden road to Samarkand was travelled by many hardy ancients of Western Europe who returned…. with tales of the wondrous foods that they had eaten in far Cathy.”

When Marco Polo introduced pasta to the Italians, little did he dream that one day there would be an America where every day Americans would consume tons of spaghetti-and-meat balls and hundreds of thousands of pizzas!

The pizza, if not a noble dish, is at least a nourishing one, with plenty of appetite appeal and tang.

Real Sicilian pizzas are simple and satisfying to make once you get the knack. Here is Maria Lo Pinto to tell you how to fill your kitchen with magnificent aromas, and your table with munificent pizzas.

When you are ready to make your pizza ,spread your favourite topping which can be Italian sausage, pepperoni, prosciutto ham or salami.

Ingredients
1 cake yeast 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup lukewarm water ½ kg wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt anchovy tomato sauce
½ cup Italian cheese, grated

Method

1. Dissolve yeast in the lukewarm water and place the flour and salt on board. Add the dissolved yeast and knead thoroughly for 10 minutes. Add oil and continue kneading until smooth.
2. Cover well and set aside in a warm place for about two hours or until dough has risen to double its size. Pound dough, cover and set aside for about ½ an hour.
3. Spread in a large well greased baking pan about ½-inch thick and dent here and there with fingertips. Cover and set aside for a ½ hour.
4. Pour a generous layer of anchovy tomato sauce over the dough and sprinkle liberally with grated cheese.
5. Bake in a hot oven (425 d FH) for ½ hour and lower heat to 375d FH, and continue baking 15 minutes or until pizza is golden brown.
6. Remove from oven and cut into pieces about 4 to 5 inches square. Serve very hot.