What is the secret of real Italian pizza?Maybe it's in the dough? But no: Italians make different pizza doughs. Maybe it's because they bake pizza on stones? Although, modern pizzerias make do with regular ovens without any stones. Or maybe it's all about the filling? But the products in the filling are also quite recognizable. Or is real Italian pizza made with some special cheese? No, the cheese is also very ordinary. So what's the matter? What pizza recipes make it Pizza (yes, that's it, with a capital letter)? And real tasty pizza is made with soul and, of course, with little secrets.
Secrets of delicious pizza
Try to follow at least these rules, andyour pizza will definitely turn out very tasty. It doesn't matter what kind of dough you make it from and what pizza recipe you prefer: with yeast dough, with unleavened dough or with puff pastry.
Pizza from yeast dough
According to experts, the best pizzas are madenamely from yeast dough. And if you are scared by the very prospect of making such dough, then cast aside all fears: pizza dough is very easy to make! Ingredients:
- Yeast dry - 1 teaspoon;
- Sugar - 1 tablespoon;
- Water - 1 glass;
- Flour - 2.5 cups;
- Salt - 1 teaspoon;
- Vegetable oil - 1 tablespoon.
For the filling:
- Grated cheese - 200 g;
- Tomato paste - 1 tablespoon;
- Fresh tomato -1 piece;
- Fresh champignons - 5-6 pieces;
- Marinated cucumbers - 2 pieces;
- Onions - 1 piece.
Preparation:Pour the yeast into a bowl, add granulated sugar and dilute it all with warm water. Leave the yeast for ten minutes so that it begins to rise. Then mix the flour with salt in a separate bowl, gradually pour in the diluted yeast and knead the dough. Finally, add the vegetable oil and knead the dough again. Please note that with the specified proportions of flour and water, the dough will turn out very, very soft, if not slightly runny. Do not let this scare you: with such dough, the pizza will turn out soft and thin. Leave the dough to rise (with dry yeast this will happen quickly), and in the meantime prepare the filling. Finely chop the onion and lightly fry it in vegetable oil. Wash the mushrooms and cut into slices (flat mushrooms). Cut the fresh tomato into thin discs, and the pickled cucumbers into cubes. Everything is ready for the filling. You can start assembling the pizza. Place the dough on a round, greased frying pan and carefully stretch it along the bottom. The pizza base should be thin – about five millimetres. Then grease the dough with tomato paste and put onion on top, which we sprinkle with a small amount of grated cheese. After that, lay out the sliced mushrooms, and on top – the pickled cucumbers. Place tomato slices on top of the cucumbers and sprinkle everything with cheese. This time generously and heartily. Bake the pizza in a preheated oven at medium heat for twenty minutes.
Pizza from puff pastry
Puff pastry at home will prepareis quite problematic. And why do it when you can buy ready-made? So buy a package of frozen puff pastry at your local supermarket and start making pizza. Ingredients:
- Puff pastry - 1 sheet from the package;
- Sausage with salami - 100 g;
- Ham - 100 g;
- Black olives without pits - 5-6 pieces;
- Grated cheese - 1 glass;
- Onion - half of the head;
- Fresh tomato - 1 piece;
- Mayonnaise - 1 tablespoon;
- Sour cream - 1 tablespoon;
- Tomato paste - 1 teaspoon;
- Lemon juice or wine vinegar - 1 tablespoon.
Preparation:While the dough is defrosting, let's prepare all the ingredients for the filling. Finely chop half an onion and marinate it in a small amount of lemon juice or wine vinegar. Cut the sausage and ham into strips, and the tomatoes into thin circles. Finely chop the olives too. Grease the pan with vegetable oil and put a sheet of puff pastry on it, which we carefully stretch with our hands along the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle some grated cheese on the dough, and put the onion on top, distributing it evenly over the dough. On top of the onion, lay the sausage and ham cut into strips, and put the tomato slices as the next layer. Put the sliced olives on the tomatoes and grease the top of the pizza with sauce: sour cream, mayonnaise and tomato paste. The top layer of the pizza is grated cheese, of which there should be a lot. Now we put our pizza in a preheated oven and bake for twenty minutes. Perhaps you won’t surprise anyone with this pizza recipe, but here’s the result… Try it and see for yourself.
Pizza from unleavened dough
Of course, this dough can only be called unleavenedconditionally. These are not dumplings, for which the dough is made only from flour and water. After all, the recipe for unleavened dough for pizza is more complicated, it’s just that such dough is made without yeast. Ingredients:
- Flour - 8 tablespoons;
- Kefir - 1 glass;
- Mayonnaise - 1 tablespoon;
- Sour cream - 1 tablespoon;
- Egg - 1 piece;
- Salt - half a teaspoon;
- Sugar - half a teaspoon;
- Soda - 1 teaspoon.
For the filling:
- Hard cheese - 200 g;
- Smoked sausage - 200 g;
- Fresh tomato - 2 pieces;
- Onion - 1 piece;
- Bulgarian pepper (fresh) - half;
- Mayonnaise - 3 tablespoons;
- Marjoram and greens - to taste.
Preparation:First, prepare the dough by whisking a raw egg with sour cream, mayonnaise, sugar and salt. Next, add kefir and baking soda quenched with vinegar to this mixture, and then, gradually adding flour, knead the dough. The dough should be thick and dense. This dough needs to rise or, as cooks say, breathe. Therefore, cover it with a clean towel and leave for about fifteen minutes. While the dough is maturing, prepare the filling for our pizza. Cut the onion into rings, the tomato into slices, the sausage into circles, the bell pepper into cubes, and grate the cheese. Then take a baking pan, grease it with oil and put the dough, which we stretch along the bottom of the pan into a thin (five to seven millimeters) layer with low sides (one to one and a half centimeters). Grease the dough with mayonnaise, sprinkle with marjoram and put a thick layer of grated cheese on top. Put the filling on the cheese in a circle, alternating the ingredients in the following way: tomato, sausage, onion, and again tomato, sausage and so on. Place the sausage circles, onion rings and tomato slices overlapping, covering the entire surface of the pizza with the filling. Sprinkle everything with finely chopped bell pepper on top and cover with another layer of grated cheese and finely chopped herbs. Bake the pizza, as in the previous cases, for twenty minutes, over medium heat. Know that the secret of your successful pizza recipe can be anything: correctly “guessed” dough, a successful combination of products for the filling, a certain type of cheese or an unusual sauce. And then you will be able to boast of an original pizza recipe and share your own secrets of its preparation. Go for it! You will definitely succeed. We recommend reading:
