Pizza

Last week I invited my father and my brother over for dinner. The menu was... homemade pizza!

I got the recipe from Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads - which is one of my favorite cookbooks. The photos are beautiful and I felt like running to the kitchen to prepare ALL the recipes the minute I started flipping through the book. There's a DVD included, which shows Richard Bertinet's way of preparing dough. I liked it a lot, too.

I got 3 big pizzas with the dough - each one around 30cm large.

I had already made this recipe before, but I used all purpose flour and had to add more flour to get it right (something against the author's technique). But this time I used a special bread flour that was released here in Brazil and it worked perfectly!

The idea of posting pictures of the entire preparation process was my husband's, who also worked as the photographer. :D

Pizza

510g bread flour
15g fresh yeast
2 teaspoons salt
360ml water, room temperature
62ml olive oil

Place the flour in a large bowl. Add the yeast and rub it with the flour using your fingertips. Add the salt, water and olive oil and mix until you have a mixture that resembles porridge.
You won't knead the dough the way you are used to - instead, you'll use your fingers as if they were "forks" and lift the dough, swing it upwards and then slap it back down, away from you, onto the counter. It will be sticky, but go ahead. Have no fear. :D
Stretch the front of the dough towards you, then lift it back over itself to form an arc - this will trap the air - still stretching it forwards and sideways and tucking it in around the edges. Repeat this sequence until the dough is not sticky anymore.
Place the dough in a lightly floured bowl, cover and let it rest for 70 minutes or overnight in the freezer, for better crust and taste - mine rose for 3 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 250ºC (475ºF)
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, shape into a ball and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Divide the ball into three even parts.
Continue to work on an evenly floured surface so your dough won't stick to it.
Place the heel of your hand in the center of each ball and push it away from you to stretch the dough out. Keep stretching until you have a large round pizza - the book says 20-22cm, but mine were 30cm:

Spread some tomato sauce on the dough - I was inspired that day so I made my own tomato sauce:

Sprinkle with mozzarella, parmesan, basil leaves or whatever your imagination calls for - I made one with broccoli, olives, cheese and onions:

Slide the pizza to a pre-heated baking tray or stone and bake for 20 minutes or until the dough is cooked and golden. I don't have a baking stone and placed the pizza on cool baking trays, so it took my oven 40 minutes to bake them.

Makes 3 large pizzas