Peek: Margherita Pizza! (Patreon)

As per the announcement, my birthday was this week, and I wanted to share the pizza recipe we made for it! Margherita pizza is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy to do right. It's just dough, sauce, cheese, and basil, in theory. But it's how it all comes together that makes it delicious.

Sauce first, since it's not too hard: 1 28oz can of san marzano tomatoes. I'm not sure if it's a brand or a variety, but it's definitely the tradition for this sort of pizza. They look like they're already blended when you get the can open, but they're whole in there, along with some sauce, too. Either way, the whole thing goes into a blender along with a dozen or so garlic cloves and about half a teaspoon of salt and pepper. Blend smooth and add more salt/pepper to taste, should taste fresh and bright!

The dough is more of a thing. First: the ingredients.

500g bread flour

350ml water

2g instant or active dry yeast, about 1/3rd of a normal yeast packet.

15g salt

5g sugar

10g olive oil

Mix the dry ingredients and hopefully you have a stand mixer with a dough hook. Makes it a lot easier. Add the water and start on low, and once it comes together, bump it up to medium to do the kneading for you, about four minutes. Then add the oil and let it knead again. Before the oil, the dough will stick to the hook and look like a good dough. Once you add the oil, it will look like the dough falls apart, but just keep kneading (with the hook on the mixer) and it'll come back together.

Then, put it in a large mixing bowl to cover with a hand towel and let sit for a day. Yeah, just sit on the counter. It'll climb the bowl, and you can punch it down or not, depending on it if looks like it might escape.

On the day of cooking, separate into about 315g balls, knead a bit, and set into containers to proof for about 3 hours. It helps the dough a lot to let it proof.

Last thing we need: mozzarella and basil. You can go super fancy and get a big expensive ball, or use the smaller balls that come in water that you should be able to find in most delis. Basil is... basil. Get it fresh.

Now to cook!

Get a pizza stone/steel, and you can either do it in your oven, or even on an outdoor grill! We used a grill, and it came out great. Just mind the temperature. While pizza does great at high temperatures, most pizza stones can break if you get over 550 F, so be mindful if you use your grill.

A pizza peel (the huge spatula) is also good, but not required. A cookie sheet with no walls, or just turned upside-down will do in a pinch, just make sure to use plenty of cornmeal or semolina flour to keep the pizza from sticking.

Grab a dough ball, stretch and roll it nice and thin to about a foot diameter, then lay onto the cookie sheet (after laying down a good bit of cornmeal/semolina), spoon the sauce over it, sprinkle with the mozzarella balls, and put some basil on top. The balls won't cover the whole pizza, but that's intended. While they will melt when cooked, even then there will be a lot of open sauce to be seen.

Slide the pizza onto the stone and give it a couple minutes. I let it be for about 5 minutes, turned it around, got started making the next one, and by the time it was done, the first one was ready. The pizza should come out nice and thin with a crispy crust that still has a nice chew to it.

It will be molten lava hot, but try to resist immediately digging in. It's even harder to resist once you get a taste. A few minor burns are worth it, right?

So that's margherita pizza. Simple in theory, but needs a lot of time and some specialty stuff to make properly. Oh, and once you finish cooking all the pizzas, let the stone cool where it is. Trying to cool it faster than letting it just sit in the oven/grill could make it break.

I hope you guys can give it a try, it was fun and I'm looking forward to making more some day.

Khenal.