Secret to great pizza

After experimenting, we think we've found out why our PIZZA has risen so much.
Just look at the results - a well risen, light and fluffy pizza.
No need for an expensive pizza stone to achieve these results either.
We made the dough and prepared the topping before going out for a couple of hours. When we returned, we turned the oven on and the pizza was ready within 20 minutes. No need to dial a takeaway and this pizza is less than £1.50 each!
Here's how we made this pizza:

PIZZA

Ingredients

Makes 2 large pizzas

BASE -using a traditional recipe

300g bread flour

8g fresh yeast 

210ml water

small teaspoon sugar

6g salt

5ml olive oil

TOPPING

Passata

Garlic

Your choice of topping - we chose goat's cheese, chorizo, red onion and fresh chilli

EQUIPMENT

2 rectangular baking trays 

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Make your pizza dough. You can use a dried mix from the supermarket or even buy just a a pre-made base. If making your own, there are plenty of recipes on the internet. Pizza is basically a bread mix with olive oil. 

Mix the flour with the yeast, sugar and water in a jug and wait until you can see bubbles. Warm water will speed the process up. Don't use boiling water or you will kill the yeast. It will take around 5 - 10 minutes.

Add the oil, bread flour and salt together. Once the yeast has activated, pour onto the flour mix and stir together. 

Knead the dough on a floured work surface for about 10 minutes. Or five minutes in a food processor using the dough hook.

Place dough in a bowl and cover with cling film and allow to rise to double the size (an hour or two).

Remove risen dough and knead for one minute, then split into however many pizzas you want to make - we made two large pizzas. 

SECRET: Place your regular baking trays upside down (so you can slide the pizza on and off) in the oven while it heats up. We think the hotter the tray the more the pizza will rise. Use a silicon baking sheet between the pizza and trays.

Add a crushed garlic clove to the passata and use this to spread onto the base of the pizza. 

Add the chorizo slices, sliced onion and chilli. Then we placed this into a very hot oven (220ºC) for 6 minutes. We then added the cheese (we like to add the cheese halfway through baking as it keeps its structure) and returned the pizza to the oven for a further 5 minutes.

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Do you know how many calories you can eat each day?

Here's a link to our very first blog post about our weight loss journey, which we began in January 2011. We started this blog as a way of recording what we ate while losing weight. The blog is a food diary, and contains lots of recipes, tips and ideas about losing weight.

You'll find our WEIGHT LOSS PLAN here. 

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