Ingredients:
- 1 cup warm water
- 1/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 ounce of active dry yeast (1.5 teaspoon)
- 2.5 cups all purpose flour (or whole wheat if you like that option)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
How to make it:
- Mix the sugar, warm water and yeast in a bowl. Mix and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. You will see some bubbles. Sometimes we don’t see the bubbles, and some others we do, we’ve gotten good results even without the bubbles! So don’t worry if you don’t see them.
- Add the flour and salt inside a large bowl, make a well in the middle, add the water mix and oil and start mixing. If you have an electric mixer with the knead attachment, it’s very helpful as it reduces the amount of time you have to knead by hand. If you don’t have it, you can make it work by hand regardless. Knead it until it’s soft (about 8-10 minutes).
- Take another bowl and brush it with a bit of olive oil. Put the dough in and cover it. Let it rest for about 1 hour. You will see it growing in size.
- Divide the dough in 2, dust the counter with some flour and extend with a rolling pin or by hand (We like doing it by hand better). You can make two medium sized pizzas.
- Add tomato sauce (we also make our own and can share the recipe if you’d like it), cheese and other toppings you desire.
- Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes (or see below our tips).
Our tips: We’ve tried different things to improve the look and feel of the pizza and the following has worked great. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.
- Add the salt and olive oil to the water/yeast mixture, but only after you have let it rest for 5-10 minutes. Mix it well. We’ve found that the salt spreads more evenly when mixed with water than with the flour.
- We prefer to form the pizzas by hand, spreading the dough on the tray. This allows for the dough to form more bubbles when cooked and be crustier (in our opinion).
- You can decide to cook it for longer at a lower temperature, but what has worked best for us is to bake it at the highest your oven allows (usually 500 to 550 degrees fahrenheit) and the pizza is done in about 8-10 minutes. We place it in the lower rack of the oven and it tends to have a better crust.
