Homemade Pizza- 3 Amazing Versions + Pizza Dough Recipe | You've Got Meal!

I honestly think that fast food has gained a far too bad reputation than it deserves. Pizza, hamburgers, kebabs, fries, all these food industry bad boys can be redeemed with just a little ingenuity and effort into some great tasting healthy meals. From all the choices, pizza is my favorite for cooking at home. It’s simple, delicious, let’s you combine a lot of incredible flavors and, if you make your own dough, it gives you that rewarding feeling that you get when baking.

In this case, I used the recipe for the dough from the Jamie Oliver site, except I halved the quantities he suggested, meaning I used:

• 500 grams of 000 flour, 
• 7 grams of dried yeast (that’s basically a small dose that you can buy individually), 
• 1 tbs. sugar, 
• 1 tsp. fine salt, 
• 2 tbs. olive oil, 
• 325 ml of warm water. 

1. Sieve the flour in a large, deep pan (I tried doing this on a work surface but I ended up making a giant mess in the kitchen), add the salt. 
2. In a separate bowl, mix the yeast with the sugar, olive oil and the warm water. 
3. After leaving the wet mixture sit for a couple of minutes, pour it in a well in the middle of the flour and start bringing in the sides into the middle, gradually. 
4. Use your hands to knead the dough until you get a nice, smooth and elastic result. 
5. Next, put the dough in a well floured bowl, cover it with a damp cloth and let it rest in a warm room without a draft source for an hour – it should double in size. 
6. The resulting dough was enough for 3 pizzas with a diameter of 30 cm with a thin base.

The 1^st one was with: pancetta, salami, zucchini, broccoli, as seen above. The pancetta was amazing especially when we curled it on the dough and it became just a bit crispy. The broccoli alongside the zucchini made this pizza so special that it was Mrs. G's favourite. Plus, it is healthier than most. I have to mention the broccoli stays just a bit crunchy and that is perfect and you have to use fresh broccoli, as the frozen one might leave some water and make the pizza more runny.  

Mean while, prepare your ingredients for the pizzas. For all 3 pizzas we used some fresh Mozzarella that we crumbled on top. Also, I started by massaging the rolled pizza dough with a very small amount of olive oil (just enough to give it some shine) and relatively thick tomato paste (also used some of the home made paste that we made for this recipe). The cooking time in a hot oven (200 Celsius) was around 10-11 minutes. As another advice from our pizza adventure be careful with the Gorgonzola – don’t use too much and place it near the center of the dough as it tends to melt a lot and get runny. The same rule applies only partially for the fresh mozzarella as it tends to hold its own better, but, again, don’t overdo it, especially near the edges. 

The 2^nd one: salami, Gorgonzola, zucchini, mushrooms, onion, as seen above. This one had a classic taste, a nice tangy hint from the Gorgonzola and you can't possible not love mushroom and onion together on a pizza.  

The 3^rd one: pancetta, broccoli, zucchini, olives, onions and artichoke hearts, as seen above. Basically the one where I went all out, a true veggie delight on a pancetta bed and topped with cheesy, Mozzarella goodness. 

Super easy, super fast, super fun and super delicious food. And the next time you start taking a look at those menus from your neighborhood pizza place keep in mind that you can take them out of business any time with this kind of tiny effort. Ok, might sound worse than it actually is, a slight exaggeration there, but you get the idea.

Enjoy,