Cooking 101: Homemade pizza

Daniel Pfyl, hospitality management lecturer at Otago Polytechnic, shares some professional techniques to make your cooking easier. In this series he demonstrates some easy, inexpensive meals to cook for your family or flatmates.

Home-made pizzas make an inexpensive meal or sustaining party food for a crowd. Children love making them and selecting their own toppings, and as a bonus you can make healthier versions than the cheese-laden commercial types.

This week Chef Pfyl tops and bakes pizza. (See March 16 or www.odt.co.nz and search "cooking 101" for how to make dough, and March 30 for how to make pizza sauce and cheese mix.)

The dough recipe given on March 16 will make four round pizzas or two large slabs about 25cm x 35cm, which will feed four big eaters.

To shape the pizza

Preheat oven to 200degC on fan bake. Spray oven trays or shallow pans with oil.

 

Divide the rested dough into two if making slabs or four if making round pizzas. Shape into rounds or slabs by rolling out the dough to the approximate size and then stretching and pressing to fit the pan.

Press down about 1cm from the edge to make a rim so the sauce doesn't run off.

 

 

 

Spoon the sauce on to the pizzas, about 2 tablespoons per tray or one per round, and spread thinly with a spatula.

Sprinkle the cheese mix thinly, almost to the edge. Europeans don't put as much cheese on as the pizza chains usually do, Chef Pfyl says.

 

 

 

To top the pizza

You can use any toppings you like, but Chef Pfyl demonstrates four:

Mushroom and ham

thinly sliced red onion
thinly sliced tomato
lots of thinly sliced mushrooms
strips of thinly sliced ham (shaved ham is too thin)
capers (optional)

Meat-lovers'

thinly sliced mushrooms
strips of salami
strips of ham
strips of bacon

Tuna

1 can tuna (185g) with lemon pepper or Thai-flavoured, broken into small chunks
thinly sliced red onion
thinly sliced red capsicum

Feta and courgette

1 medium-sized courgette, cut in half lengthwise then finely sliced, and blanched
100g feta, cubed or crumbled
a little thinly sliced red onion
a little thinly sliced red capsicum

Slice all the toppings and have them all ready before spreading over the cheese. Chef Pfyl likes to prepare all the toppings before assembling the pizzas. He slices the vegetables and meat and briefly blanches the courgettes - bring a pot of water to the boil, drop in the sliced courgettes. When the water returns to the boil, strain, cool, and squeeze out any excess water. Or you could cook them briefly in oil.

After putting on the toppings, sprinkle them with freshly ground black pepper and a little dried oregano.

Three-cheese pizza with farmhouse, a creamy blue and parmesan. Smoked farmhouse cheese is a nice topping too. Or, to make a foccacia, instead of using the tomato and cheese topping, brush the flat bread with olive oil, and sprinkle sparingly with flaky salt, and rosemary or sliced olives.

The dough could be shaped into a cottage loaf, a large ball with a smaller ball on top, or you could try thinner bases and other toppings.

 

To bake the pizza

Put the trays in the oven at 200degC on fan bake for about eight minutes, then turn and swap the trays for another eight minutes.

When cooked, sprinkle with a little more dried oregano, or olive oil or chilli or garlic oil. A pizza wheel is best for cutting pizza, but a large knife will do.

Serve while hot.

 

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If you would like to request to a particular technique we haven't already shown, please let us know. Write to Cooking 101, Editorial Features, Otago Daily Times, P.O Box 181, Dunedin or email odt.features@odt.co.nz with cooking in the subject line.

To check earlier Cooking 101 columns visit: www.odt.co.nz and search for "cooking 101".

More information on cooking from the Otago Polytechnic can be found on www.otagocookeryl4.blogspot.com

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