Sunday's recipe: homemade pizza in a brick oven

Ah pizza, I can't even describe how much I love it! The base remains the same while you can put anything your heart desires on top of it, savory, sweet, it doesn't really matter. Most people need at least tomato sauce and cheese on top of theirs to refer to them as pizzas, so I often make sure to have the basics. 

I shared with you my favorite pizza dough recipe before. It is exactly the one I used for our pizza evening during our holidays in Tuscany. The one thing different to home? The brick oven, which brings the art of pizza making to perfection.

Ingredients for the pizza dough:

(makes for six), click here for German version 

500 ml water, lukewarm 

925 gr flour 

40 gr yeast 

20 gr salt, I often just eye-ball it 

25 ml olive oil 

1 pinch of granulated sugar 

How to: 

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water and stir in the olive oil, sugar and salt. Next add the flour step by step, mixing it with a spoon until it's shaping up in a ball, then knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it's smooth. Let it rise for about half an hour in a warm place, afterwards knead again. Now put the ball of dough in a bowl and cover with plastic, let it rest in the cold at least a couple of hours, preferably over night up until two days. After having done the short version and the 2 day version I can honestly say that the pizza bakes up much nicer if you let it rest in the fridge for two days, but overnight works just as well. I roll out my pizzas quite thin because I prefer it that way. When I'm using my oven at home, I pre-heat it on the highest temperature possible and bake it for a couple of minutes, just make sure to keep an eye on it. 

To me, this is a very reliable recipe which I use quite often, as you can keep the remaining dough in the fridge or freezer. Why not make a foccaccia or calzone with the rest? This dough is never wasted in my home.

Want to feel a bit longer like you're in Italy? Have a look at these two posts from 2011, amongst my all time favorites on the blog: 

Roman Holiday

The beating heart of  Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Colosseum