Pizza

The sauce is an important element of pizza. It should be juicy, rich, but at the same time not too bright. Such that it would set off and emphasize the taste of the filling, but not drown it out.

Don’t be lazy. Want to make the right sauce? Do not use prepared tomato paste as a basis. Instead, use canned tomatoes in your own juice: you can find both Russian and Italian ones in large supermarkets. Drain, grind and add spices. Provencal herbs, salt, pepper – done!
Experiment. Unable to buy canned tomatoes? Nothing wrong. A great sauce can be made with fresh tomatoes. Peel them, cut, and pour them over with boiling water. Simmer in a skillet for 10 minutes, then pass through a blender. Add spices: oregano, garlic, bay leaf. Return the sauce to the stove and boil it about twice.
Don’t overdo it. There should not be too much sauce. The most delicious pizza recipes emphasize no more than three tablespoons of sauce per standard circle of dough.
Watch the consistency. Make the sauce too runny and your pizza will float.
Get creative. Classic sauces are made from tomatoes, but the beauty of pizza at home is that you can invent new unusual combinations for it. You can substitute hummus or squash caviar for tomatoes. Or take cream cheese – it goes well with chicken and pineapple.
And a little bonus: Jamie Oliver’s perfect and easy sauce. Prepares in 10 minutes. You will need 3 cans of canned tomatoes in their own juice, 4 cloves of garlic, a bunch of basil, 8 tablespoons of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Chop the garlic, fry it with the basil in olive oil. Add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper. After a couple of minutes, remove from heat, pass through the city. And simmer for another 10 minutes over low heat.

Food

5 Golden Rules for Pizza Filling

Whatever one may say, but the most delicious in pizza is the filling. We have collected 5 life hacks for you that will make her simply divine.

Rule of thumb: no more than four ingredients in one pizza. Then their tastes will not mix into something indistinct but will complement and emphasize each other. The thickness of the filling is no more than 1 cm.
Don’t use raw mushrooms and onions. During cooking, moisture will begin to be released from them, which will soak the pizza dough. Pre-fry them lightly in a pan to release the juice.
The same goes for tomatoes: regular tomatoes produce a lot of juice. Instead, it’s better to take cherry.
Be careful when buying mozzarella. In large supermarkets, you can find a special one, marked “for pizza”. This is what you need: regular mozzarella is stored in brine and contains a lot of moisture. Special – drier, it will melt and stretch beautifully.
Some foods are best added after baking. For example, arugula and basil retain their flavor only while they are fresh. Ham and prosciutto lose their delicate taste when baked. Decorate the finished pizza with them – and the dish will look beautiful as if a food stylist has worked on it.

Food

12 Secrets to a Very Tasty Pizza

Before you embark on this exciting business, try to create in your kitchen that magical atmosphere that accompanies the preparation of pizza in her homeland. Pizza has more than enough homeland, so in the process of culinary creativity you can imagine yourself anywhere.

A thick layer of dough is good for fluffy, layered, and moist filling. You can also layout the main filling of vegetables and meat on it.
The frying pan has a lot of advantages over baking on a baking sheet: the dough is easily removed, practically does not burn; you can bake different pizzas and put different toppings.
Before baking, the pan, like the oven, is heated to the required temperature, a small amount of vegetable oil is poured to lubricate the bottom and soak the pizza, and heated. Then spread the dough, fry on one side, and remove from the pan.
You can also bake pizza under the lid. This is even easier since it will be baked all at once, it does not need to be turned over. There are pans with thermal glass lids; they are most convenient for baking pizza.
Roll out the dough in a small layer, spread it on a preheated pan greased with a large amount of vegetable oil, and immediately put the filling on it. Cover with a lid and reduce the heat to a minimum so that the dough is baked evenly.
In a frying pan, pizza is cooked much faster than in an oven: the baking time is 15 minutes. The plain dough can be kept on the fire for 10 minutes, as it roasts faster than yeast dough. We remind you: its thickness should not be too large.
Its readiness is checked with a match, piercing it in the thickest place. If the match is dry, the pizza is ready. In an open pan, the dough is baked in 2 steps, so the baking time is slightly increased (the pancake should be allowed to cool slightly before putting the filling). Thus, pizza preparation takes 20-25 minutes.
Since the dough is baked pretty quickly, the raw filling simply won’t keep up with it. All of it must be prepared in advance – fried, stewed, or boiled.
Its thickness must also be monitored so that it does not spread, as the juice or syrup will be absorbed into the dough and it will remain damp and tasteless. In addition, the liquid can seep through the layer of dough and burn the pizza. The best filling option, in this case, is when the bottom layer is meat or fish, dry boiled vegetables, and on top – slightly softer or raw foods. Then they will saturate the lower layers, but nothing will leak to the bottom of the pan.
It is quite easy to bake sweet pizzas in a skillet: they usually do not flow, and they do not take a lot of time. The filling for sweet pizzas is mainly fresh fruits, dried fruits, or thick jam (apple, pear, etc.), which do not require prolonged heat treatment. The dough for sweet pizzas can be made with cottage cheese, with the addition of juices and jams: it turns out softer and bakes better.
When baking pizza in a frying pan, do not top with mayonnaise or the like (to prevent the main layers from burning).
Since, due to health problems, not every person can afford baked pizza, and the desire to try such a tasty treat is great. For these cases, the option of cooking on a steam bath is provided.

Cooking Tips

9 Tips for Cooking Delicious Italian Pizza

Italians, as everyone knows, are considered to be the true connoisseurs of filled round yeast cake. But any gourmet is not averse to treating himself with such a delicacy, no matter how different his food preferences from the standard ones.
Pizza will conquer with its versatility because there are hundreds of thousands of recipes for vegetable, fruit, meat, and cheese open pies.
But becoming a real pizza maker is not so easy, you need to have valuable knowledge about making the perfect dough for your favorite snack – Italian pizza.

The final taste of the dish depends on the dough. Therefore, the base is prepared from several varieties of wheat (ordinary and coarse grinding) and spread on a hot baking sheet.
True pizza makers knead the dough very quickly but leave it to rise for a couple of days. Their movements are smooth but confident, they try to knead every fold, fill the dough with oxygen, make it soft and elastic.
A true master will never use a rolling pin. He works with the dough with his hands, stretches it, throws it into the air, twists it, thinning his “canvas”.
The thickness of a classic Neapolitan pizza is exactly 3 mm in the center and 1-2 cm at the side. This strict rule is followed in all restaurants.
To keep the dough from getting wet, you can brush it with extra virgin olive oil.
You should not stock up on freshly prepared dough for future use; after defrosting, its delicate texture may be disturbed, and you will not be able to achieve an ideal result with maximum effort.
A semi-finished product is baked at high temperatures in stone ovens on hot stones that serve as a baking sheet. For a short time in the oven, the ingredients have time to cook without losing their useful properties, the crust becomes perfectly crispy.
If you want a flat base, then preheat 2 trays in the oven at different levels. You will need them to properly bake the dough. Put the dough on the upper tier, the heat from the lower one will rise upward, evenly heating the 1st baking sheet. This will cook the pizza in half the time.
Kneading. This is the most delicate process. The secret lies in the patience and experience of the master. Do not use rolling pins, knead the dough with your hands, feel how it becomes pliable, do not tear when stretched. Do this lovingly, without too much fuss, preferably in a warm room.

Food

10 Original Pizza Fillings

Would you like to make a pizza with an unusual filling? Then we have prepared 10 options for unusual fillings for you!

Soft cheese, pear, and honey. A very simple and concise filling option. You will need any soft cream cheese such as ricotta, which you need to spread evenly over the pizza in a thin layer. Put a pear cut into thin slices on top and brush everything with liquid fragrant honey. We recommend sprinkling with freshly ground pepper before serving. It turns out very tasty.
Eggs, spinach, and feta cheese. The combination of fairly bland spinach and brackish cheese has become a gastronomic classic, so why not use this option for a healthy pizza. Fry finely chopped spinach in a skillet with a little olive oil, then add 2-3 eggs and fry, stirring constantly, for about a minute. Distribute the resulting filling on the dough, sprinkle with chopped feta cheese, and can be sent to the oven.
Pesto, chicken, and hard cheese. This filling option is already more satisfying. You will need a boiled chicken breast, cut into small pieces by hand, and laid out on top of the dough pre-greased with pesto sauce. Before putting the pizza in the oven, sprinkle it with grated hard cheese to make it not only tasty but also very juicy.
Tomato paste, ground beef, and fresh herbs. Peel and finely chop a small onion and a clove of garlic. Fry them in a skillet in olive oil, add the ground beef, until half cooked. At this time, brush the dough with tomato paste, and then spread the meat filling evenly on top. Sprinkle the finished pizza with fresh chopped herbs just before serving.
Red beans, corn, and tomato paste. You will need a jar of canned red beans, which you need to mash in a puree. To make the puree not too thick, you can add liquid from the jar. Grease the dough with the resulting puree, top with canned corn, and red onions cut into rings. At the very end, add literally a little tomato paste and sprinkle with suitable spices such as paprika or chili.
Mushrooms, onions, and parmesan. Mushrooms are a fairly standard ingredient in pizza, but we suggest you use them in a slightly different way. Chop the mushrooms as small as possible and fry them in a little olive oil, then add a little heavy cream. You should have a mushroom paste, which you need to distribute on the dough as a base, put thin onion rings on top and sprinkle with Parmesan.
Hummus, tomatoes, and fresh herbs. To make this pizza, use hummus as a sauce and spread it over the dough. Next, put on the pizza finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, which you can buy or cook yourself according to our recipe, as well as fresh tomatoes cut into slices. Place the pizza in the oven and sprinkle with chopped herbs such as cilantro, which goes well with tomatoes, before serving.
Dijon mustard, smoked salmon, and red onion. This version of pizza is loved by many French people because grain mustard is one of the most popular sauces in France, which goes perfectly with almost all ingredients. Spread some mustard over the dough, place small pieces of fish and red onion, cut into rings or half rings. As a complement, we recommend sprinkling the pizza with fresh dill for an even more delicious result.
Pumpkin puree, cheese, and rucola. Vegetable puree or vegetable caviar is an uncommon and very tasty base for pizza, which can easily replace tomato paste. You need to mash the pre-baked pumpkin in mashed potatoes and then mix with grated hard cheese. Spread the resulting mass over the dough and bake. Sprinkle the pizza with arugula before serving. This will set off the delicate taste of the pumpkin puree. Plus, this option is perfect for vegetarians.
Tomato paste, eggplant, bell peppers, and mozzarella. This pizza can be called not just Italian, but the Mediterranean. To prepare it, pre-fry the sliced eggplant and bell pepper on a wire rack or grill pan. Place them on a dough greased with tomato paste, adding sliced mozzarella. However, the range of taste sensations will be incomplete if you do not add basil leaves at the end.

Cooking Tips

7 Secrets to Making Pizza Dough

Pizza is an ideal meal for a company: family dinner, get-togethers with friends, big party. First, everyone loves her – well, almost everyone. Second, pizza is a lot of fun to make. It’s very simple and you can experiment along the way. And the result is guaranteed to be delicious. In this article, we will reveal the secrets of making real Italian pizza and share the tips of professional chefs.

Homemade pizza starts with the dough. Of course, you can buy a ready-made semi-finished product in a store. But it’s much more interesting to make it yourself. By the way, it takes a few days for real pizza makers to make pizza, and it’s the dough that matters. They knead it and leave it to rise for a few days. You will say – but I want pizza here and now. Well, there is a special life hack for this. To make the dough rise faster, you can heat it up in the oven. Heat the stove to 70 degrees. Then cool for 10 minutes and place the dough in the oven. Make sure that the temperature is not higher than this mark, otherwise, the yeast will die. You can put a tray with warm water under the baking sheet – then the dough will be even more tender and fluffy.
Is the dough ready? Remove the rolling pin! This is not a joke: Italian chefs do not roll out the dough with a rolling pin, but knead it with their fingers and then unwind it, thanks to which the cake takes on the look we are used to. By the way, perfectly round pizzas are the prerogative of fast food. It is difficult to achieve the shape of the correct circle by hand, so the pizza from the hands of a real pizza maker can be a little uneven – this is a sign of its authenticity. Well, if you don’t have a special round board, it doesn’t matter. Homemade pizza is good because it can be anything – even round, even rectangular, in the shape of a baking sheet.
The thickness of the dough according to the classic recipe of Italian pizza is 3 mm in the center, up to 2 cm at the edges.
As you know, all people are divided into two categories: those who eat the pizza crust, and those who leave it on the plate. Personally, we think crisp is the tastiest thing in dough! She is also needed to hold a piece and not get your hands dirty. Therefore, when you smear the dough with sauce and spread the filling, do not fill the whole cake – leave 1.5 – 2 cm around the edges. Here’s how to make the crust really crunchy. Turn the baking sheet upside down. Cover it with parchment and sprinkle it with cornflour. And put the pizza on top. Then we put it in the oven for 10 minutes, and voila: the crunch is no worse than in the best Italian pizzeria.
By the way, it is also better to reheat yesterday’s pizza in the oven. In the microwave, it loses its crunchiness, becomes dry and hard. And if you put it on the same parchment and put it in the oven for 5 – 8 minutes, it will be just as tasty as yesterday.
There are many recipes for pizza dough. We offer classic – easy and quick to prepare. You will need five ingredients: flour, yeast, olive oil, salt, and water. The main thing here is flour: we advise you not to skimp on it and take a good, Italian one.
Dissolve a bag of yeast in 125 ml of warm water. Pour flour in a slide into a deep bowl, season with salt. Make a small indentation in the center of the slide and carefully pour the water and yeast into it. Stir the mixture with a fork. Then, when the dough begins to turn out, knead it with your hands. Add flour, if necessary, until it becomes one piece. Pour olive oil into a bowl and knead for another 10 minutes. After that, the dough will become elastic and smooth. Wait for it to rise and you can cook.

Cooking Tips

12 Tips For Cooking Pizza

Making pizza at home is now easier than ever. In supermarkets, you can find a ready-made pizza base, which is very easy to prepare with your favorite filling. You don’t need to be a chef to do this, just follow a few simple tips and you’ll save money by not ordering this dish at home. Here are some pizza-making tips you should know before you get started.

Always preheat the oven before baking your pizza. If you start baking in a cold oven, then the pizza will be raw, it will take longer to bake it, and it will lose its taste.
To evenly and thoroughly bake a pizza with a double filling and a diameter of 30 cm, preheat the oven to 200 ° C.
Always place the pizza tray in the center of the oven.
Don’t forget about potholders! You don’t want to get burned!
Put the finished pizza on a flat horizontal surface, so you can cut it as evenly as possible. The layout on a wooden board or tea towel.
To correctly determine if the pizza is done, make sure the cheese is completely melted and golden brown. The edge of the base should be slightly ruddy, and if you raise the bottom of the pizza a little, then the dough should have a uniform brownish color.
To make your pizza taste as fresh as possible, use different herbs and spices: a mixture of Italian herbs, garlic powder, sesame seeds, etc.
Pre-grease the base ready for baking with a small amount of olive oil, then it will absorb its aroma and taste very pleasant.
Remember to dust the work surface with flour when rolling. Always check the thickness so that the dough is not too thin.
Roll out the dough from the center to the edge, so it is evenly distributed.
If the rolled base is larger than the pallet, you can cut off the excess with a knife or simply roll it up with a “tube”, but then the edge will be thick. You can also use curly scissors or edging tins to make the pizza grooved.
Some vegetables, like carrots, zucchini, broccoli, require preliminary heat treatment, otherwise, the dough will not bake, but will remain raw. Onions, mushrooms, spinach, and bell peppers contain a lot of moisture and the dough can be sticky. Therefore, lightly fry (until half cooked) these products, and drain the excess liquid.

Cooking Tips

12 Tips For Pizza Toppings

There are so many toppings for pizza. What kind of pizza filling do you like?

Pizza mayonnaise (if you prefer to cook with it) is best replaced with sour cream with mashed boiled yolk, adding 1 teaspoon of mustard.
To prevent boiled or fried meat in pizza from losing its aroma and taste, it is not necessary to salt it immediately before cooking or frying, as salt causes the premature release of meat juice. After this, the meat in the pizza may be too tough and tasteless. It is advisable to cook and fry pizza meat shortly before baking it itself.
Before placing the fried meat on the dough, sprinkle it with a few tablespoons of cold water, and put a few slices of butter or margarine on top. In this case, it will preserve the taste of freshly roasted pizza.
Pizza is often made with sausage. For this purpose, it is better to use semi-smoked and boiled sausages with pieces of bacon. The sausage can be replaced with pieces of semi-smoked ham or bacon.
Pizza tomatoes can be cut into thin slices, or peeled and mashed. In order for the skin to easily peel off, immerse them in boiling water for a few seconds, and then immediately in cold water. The peel should be removed from the side opposite the stalk.
The ham for the filling can be replaced with slices of semi-smoked or boiled sausage.
For pizza, it is best to use soft and semi-hard cheese varieties (they melt and bake better).
Mixed minced meat consisting of chicken, pork, and beef can be used as an original and tasty pizza filling.
The cloves of garlic can be cut into thin slices or pressed with special garlic. It is necessary to add garlic to pizza in moderation, since its pungent smell can soak the entire filling, depriving all other ingredients of the aroma.
It is advisable to cook pizza made from fresh vegetables immediately before serving in order to maximize the nutrients of the filling, which decompose when reheated. Therefore, it is better not to reheat pizza with vegetables, but to eat it cold. Store it in the refrigerator for no longer than 2 days.
The readiness of the pizza can be recognized not only by the type of filling but also by the bottom crust of the dough: it should easily separate from the baking sheet.
If after baking you cannot remove the pizza from the pan, place the pan on a towel dampened with cold water and chill slightly as it is. The pizza can then be easily removed from the mold.

Cooking Tips

10 Tips for Cooking Healthy Pizza

Pizza is considered to be quite high-calorie and not a very healthy dish. But sometimes it is simply impossible to refuse delicious, aromatic Italian pizza! 10 tips to help you make pizza healthy and fit.

Pizza dough is best made from whole grains, which have a beneficial effect on the intestines and rejuvenate the body.
It is advisable to choose low-fat cheese.
Add plenty of fresh tomatoes to your pizza – they are rich in antioxidants and can protect against cancer.
You can make your pizza healthier by garnishing it with fresh basil leaves.
Remember that red pepper speeds up metabolism and burns fats, which will not allow extra centimeters to form at the waist.
For the sauce, use olive oil, which has been praised by nutritionists around the world.
Parsley, spinach, arugula, olives can serve as an excellent healthy addition to a recipe.
Chicken, mushrooms, and seafood are the healthiest pizza toppings. Omega-3 fatty acids, which are rich in sea fish, improve memory, fight back diseases and reduce the appearance of cellulite.
You can season seafood pizza with lemon juice.
Pizza filling made from vegetables, nuts, and goat cheese is delicious and very healthy. It enriches the body with fiber and calcium, the combination of which gives the body every opportunity to find its perfect shape.

Cooking Tips

12 Tips for Making Yummy Pizza

For several centuries, the technology of making pizza has hardly undergone any changes – except that home ovens have become gas and electric (in real professional pizzerias, ovens are still fired with wood, and not anyhow, but with a special choice). And everything else, including the obligatory manual dough preparation, remained traditional. Real Italian pizza does not tolerate hack-work and, despite all the speed of its preparation, does not like fuss: all processes should proceed clearly and measuredly.

Making pizza is very simple, and you can bake it without even having great culinary skills. At home, it is made in several ways: baked in the oven or in the microwave, stewed or fried – here the flight of your imagination is unlimited.
If you decide to bake your pizza in the oven, it is best to knead the yeast dough. Let it stand for 30-60 minutes before baking. The dough must be precipitated 2 times and only then can it be laid out in the mold.
You can bake pizza in the oven in 2 ways – on a baking sheet or in a frying pan, and its thickness should be at least 2 mm. (Thin baking pans are not suitable!) Grease the baking sheet with vegetable oil. When baking sweet pizza, you can also use cooking fat, which is then sprinkled with flour to prevent the dish from burning.
You do not need to roll out the pizza crust – the dough is laid out on a baking sheet and evenly stretched with your fingers over the entire surface so that its edges hang slightly over the edges. Before putting the dough in the oven, it needs to stand for 5-7 minutes.
If you prefer to bake pizza in a frying pan – a classic round shape, generously grease the bottom and edges with vegetable oil, as the dough will rise a lot, and then sprinkle a little with semolina so that the finished pizza can be freely removed from the mold. Put the dough in a skillet and place for 10-15 minutes in a warm place, and then in the oven.
Usually, the dough is placed in the oven without filling and baked until half cooked – when it is still raw inside, and a thin crust has formed on top. At this moment, they take it out of the oven, layout the filling in layers, and bake until tender.
The average baking time is 30-40 minutes at a temperature of 250 ° C. Each pizza is special, so there are slight differences in the recipes.
So, the dough can be thin or thick. Thin is baked in 30 minutes. A thicker layer can be left in the oven for almost 1 hour, but at the same time reduce the heat slightly by lowering the temperature to 220 ° C.
The baking time also depends on the filling. If its layer is thin or loose, it is necessary to reduce the time; denser and bulkier require longer baking times.
The filling can also be divided into liquid and thick (dry). Liquid or sweet ones require preliminary evaporation (10 minutes can be allocated for this), that is, the baking time also increases, and the temperature decreases slightly so that the dough does not burn during this time. The dry filling is done as standard.
If you use different types of filling, then put the raw one on top (for faster cooking). In this case, it is advisable to sprinkle it with cheese or a layer of some other product so that it is not open, but languishes, as if under a lid.
By the way, it is better to spread a small layer of filling on a thin cake, but not too raw. It is best if it is meat, cheese, fish, pressed or dry vegetables, and dried fruits.