How to Make Traditional Italian Pizza

An Italian pizza was the reason for our latest travels to Italy, it was at the start of November 2015, I was kneading dough for pizza, when my beloved told me - hey, we should visit Italy and try real Italian Pizza. So we did - we spent about a week in Italy, traveling a lot and trying real Italian cuisine. 

Speaking of Italian pizza in Italy, here is the craziest pizza topped with a lot of prosciutto I ever have tried - Restaurant Antica Drogheria in Lucca, Italy, those guys just rock, if you are in vicinity of Lucca (the most famous landmark of that area probably is the leaning tower of Pisa), make sure you check this place out. 

We returned home back to Georgia with a lot of new ingredients, including salami, prosciutto and many cheeses. In today's food bloger series I will show my perfect Italian pizza recipe.  

Making pizza is not hard at all, the hardest to make ideal dough for pizza (you could of course buy already made dough, but that wouldn't be the same - I really love and enjoy dough creating and kneading process - it's mind freeing hobby - clear your thoughts and focus on things that matter - pizza)

Here are ingredients for my perfect pizza dough:

Ingredietns for Pizza

For making one large pizza in standard large pan

  • 8 tablespoons flour;
  • 6 tablespoons of warm water;
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil;
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt;
  • 1 teaspoon sugar;
  • 1 teaspoon dry yeast.

Take a large bowl, and all dry ingredients at first, I start by adding flour, salt, sugar, yeast and just at the end wet ingredients - water and olive oil

Ingredients for pizza dough

Ingredients for pizza dough

If you love to take photos of your kitchen experiments I suggest using 100mm lens for taking interesting food photography. See - Digital photography school

Now, the fun part starts here - kneading the dough - at start it took me some 40 minutes to get it right, but for know I have mastered my kneading skills and usually I make perfect dough in 10 minutes. 

Once kneading process is finished and your dough is ready, cover bowl with a kitchen towel and put in the warm place for some 40 minutes, so the dough can rise up.

Dough rolling

Dough rolling

I must admit it took some time for me to learn how properly roll out ideal round pizza, I had a good chef giving me a nice tip - roll dough from three sides - first move rolling pin forward, then to the right side and the to the left side. Repeat until you have nice round flattened pizza base. 

Don’t take shaping your pizza dough too much seriously, let the shape just kind of end up the way it naturally should have been. See: How to Roll & Shape Pizza Dough

Toppings for pizza

Toppings for pizza

Before adding actual toppings to pizza I daub base with a tomato pasta or sometimes (when it's the season) with blended tomatoes. Speaking of toppings - it's all about your taste and imagination - you can add as pizza topping literally anything. But for standard use - I would recommend cheese, salami, ham, mushrooms, pineapples e.t.c. 

Today I prepared salami/prosciutto pizzas from ingredients we brought back from Italy.

Now, preheat your oven (~180C) and put your pizza to oven for some 5-7 minutes.

Freshly baked pizza straigt from the oven, sliced with pizza knife

Freshly baked pizza straight from the oven, sliced with pizza knife

Mmm, yummy...