Sammy's Homemade Pizza Topped Two Ways

There's a knack to nailing the perfect pizza dough and Sammy Jakubiak is here to share her recipe and show you how!  People say you shouldn't bother making your own pizza unless you have a wood fire oven. Although very few of us would have the luxury of a woodfired oven and making your own dough from scratch is still well worth it!  The key to perfecting homemade pizza is to turn your oven up to its highest temperature and a pizza stone heated in the oven also works a treat!  That way you can get a deliciously crispy crust on your pizza.

Sammy's Homemade Pizza Topped Two Ways

Serves: 4

Prep Time: 20 minutes plus dough resting time

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

INGREDIENTS

Pizza Dough

500g Pizza and Focaccia flour

4g yeast

1/2 cup extra flour for dusting

Meat Topping

200ml tomato passata
1 tbs dried oregano
80g mozzarella
100g flat pancetta, sliced thinly
1 head of radicchio, leaves sliced

Vegetarian Topping

200ml cooked tomato sauce.
80g mozzarella
5 tbs kale pesto
Garnish with fresh basil

To Serve

Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 250 C.

2. For the pizza dough, add 500g flour to a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. Add in the dry yeast and turn the machine on lowest speed. Whilst mixing slowly pour in 330ml of lukewarm water to form a dough. Knead on low for 6-10 minutes until the dough is elastic. Rest for 10 minutes. Or 24-48 hours in the fridge.

3. Next divide the dough into half. This will make two 12" pizza bases. Lightly dust dough with flour and cover with cling film to prevent drying out, and rest for a further 10 mintues.

4. Using a little flour and semolina to prevent the dough from sticking, roll out pizza bases with a rolling pin. Once rolled out to about 1 cm thickness, place on a sheet of baking paper to make it easy to transfer to a pizza stone.

5. For the topping spread tomato passata evenly over each base. Sprinkle over oregano, sliced pancetta, sliced radicchio and mozzarella.

6. Bake in a hot oven until golden and crisp for about 6 minutes. Serve hot with a drizzle of good quality extra virgin olive oil.

7. Repeat with vegetarian pizza toppings. 

TIPS

Ferment you pizza dough for 48 hours for the best tasting dough

Make sure you use pizza flour to make your pizza dough. We recommend Laucke Pizza and Focaccia Mix which already comes with yeast pre packed.

Make sure your oven is as hot as it can be before cooking pizza in it. Traditionally pizza is made in wood fired ovens which gives great flavour but also a very high heat. They reach about 350C usually, which means pizzas would cook in less than 2 minutes.

Use a pre cooked tomato sauce base not a raw tomato sauce like a passata. We recommend Barilla Napoletana tomato sauce.

When rolling out your dough make sure it is at room temperature. This will stop the dough from bouncing back too much. Use a little flour or even semolina to roll out the dough and prevent it from sticking. We love the crunch you get when you use semolina.

Make sure you spread your tomato base about 1cm away from the edges and don't put too much sauce in the centre.

Only have 4-5 different toppings and try to keep them as authentically Italian as possible. There is nothing worse then curry chicken and ham and pineapple on a pizza.

Mozzarella is a classic favourite cheese topping for pizza but don't be afraid to try other Italian cheese like provolone or feta.