How they make pizza dough in Italy. Dough for thin Italian pizza (classic thin)

From the moment pizza gained worldwide popularity, recipes from restaurants quickly migrated to the home kitchens of housewives from all over the world. But perfectly tasty pizza, the same as in a restaurant, does not always come out. Traditional or classic pizza, which is prepared in a pizzeria, differs mainly in its dough. In a cafe or restaurant, we get pizza that has a thin and crispy dough, with a golden crust and a soft center. At home, we take out of the oven a lush, rosy base, which is very tasty, but differs from the ideal and resembles

In order to prepare the most delicious classic pizza at home, you need to figure out what it is, how to prepare the dough correctly, and what recipes are available.

What is Italian pizza?

Italian pizza is a national dish that dates back several centuries of its existence. The dish looks like an open baked flatbread with filling placed on top. Today pizza is a world famous dish and has more than a thousand recipes. But the classic pizza recipe is considered the standard.

Classic dough recipe

The most important thing in preparing the right pizza is the right recipe, and a special technology that will prepare the perfect pizza dough. The classic recipe can be used as a basis for preparing various types of dishes. For the test you will need:

• boiled water at a temperature of 40 o C - 0.3 l;
• dry or live yeast - 10 g or 0.5 packs;
• granulated sugar - 20 g;
• salt - 1 teaspoon;
• durum flour - 1 cup;
• soft flour - 1 cup;
• vegetable oil - 30 ml.

First of all, the dough is prepared. Pour warm water into a deep bowl, add sugar, yeast and add one tablespoon of both types of flour. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and leave to rise in a warm place.

After a quarter of an hour in the bowl, the yeast will dissolve and foam will form on the surface. In another bowl, mix flour, salt, butter and suitable dough. The dough is kneaded. One of the important factors affecting its quality is the correct consistency. The result should be a soft and at the same time elastic pizza dough. The classic Italian recipe involves a thin base, which is easier to roll out from pliable dough.

How to prepare the preparation correctly?

As a rule, the above recipe for classic pizza at home involves preparing five or six bases. This volume cannot always be prepared and eaten at one time, so it is recommended to make preparations that can be stored in the freezer for up to 6 months.

So, step one is forming a ball of dough. The lump should be about fifteen centimeters in diameter. The ball must be rolled in flour, then placed on a dry surface, for example, on a cutting board and pressed with your fingers, at a distance of one centimeter from the edge. With your other hand, lightly press and pull the dough to the side, turning it.

Step two is stretching. Once the ball becomes a disk shape, you need to continue to stretch it in different directions until its diameter increases to a size of twenty-five centimeters. At the same time, the main thing is not to try to level the base sheet, it will be in special tubercles, otherwise the dough will lose air, and the pizza will not turn out attractive and without any peculiar spots on the crust.

Step three - formation. Having placed the resulting disk of dough on your knuckles, at a distance of a couple of centimeters from the edges, you need to start twisting the base, moving your hands under it at a high pace. In the process of such manipulations, it will become thinner and expand. As soon as the dough reaches a size of thirty centimeters, place it on a cutting board in flour.

Now the base is practically ready, like the classic one itself, which can be changed depending on the availability of food in the refrigerator.

Pizza classic

In order for the Italian pizza to come out, you can turn on the music and, while enjoying the pleasant atmosphere, start preparing the dish.

How to make the base is already extremely clear, but the rest needs to be sorted out. First prepare the sauce:

• tomatoes - 2 pieces;
• vegetable oil - 2 tablespoons;
• garlic - 2 cloves;
• hot ground pepper - a pinch;
• oregano, basil or other Italian spices - to taste;
• salt and sugar - 1 teaspoon each.

The filling, as a rule, can be anything, from cheese and olives to sausages, meat or seafood. But classic Italian pizza contains (one hundred and fifty grams) and one tomato.

To prepare the sauce, remove the skin from the tomato and remove the seeds (this is not necessary, but this is the classic recipe). Then the tomatoes are cut into small cubes and sent to a frying pan, pre-greased with olive oil. Tomatoes give juice. As the sauce cooks, stir it, and after fifteen minutes, as soon as it thickens, add salt, sugar, spices and garlic. The proportions are not indicated in the recipe, as the sauce is made to taste.
The tomato and mozzarella filling should be thinly cut into slices and placed on the prepared base, pre-greased with sauce.

Place the finished but raw pizza in a preheated oven and bake at a temperature of 220 to 230 degrees Celsius for ten minutes.

Pizza thin

How to prepare classic Italian pizza dough is already known, and the preparation of the sauce is usually standard. Now about the filling. It uses several types of filling, which gives it a unique taste.

You will need:

• tomato sauce - 100 g;
• ham - 70 g;
• cheese - 30 g;
• tomatoes - 2 pieces;
• olives - 30 g;
• olives 30 g;
• mushrooms (champignons) - 50 g;
• vegetable oil (for greasing the baking sheet) - 1 tablespoon.

The entire filling is laid out in random order onto the prepared piece, greased with sauce or tomato paste. Before laying out, the ham and vegetables are cut into cubes. Finally, cheese is grated on top. Bake in the oven at about 220 degrees Celsius for eight minutes.

Pizza "4 cheese"

The classic pizza called “4 cheese” is especially popular with us. It is distinguished by the delicate taste and aroma of four different cheeses.

To prepare you will need:

• cheeses "Mozzarella", "Parmesan", "Dor Blue", "Emmental" - 100 g each;
• (spices) - to taste;
• tomato - 1 piece;
• vegetable oil.

The classic Italian pizza recipe calls for four recommended types of cheese, but you may not have some of them on hand, and that's no problem. Cheeses can be replaced with analogues.

So, we grate each type of cheese, and you can crumble the soft cheese with your hands. The cheeses are laid out in layers on the finished base, spices are sprinkled, and a tomato cut into slices is laid out on top. Bake for up to fifteen minutes in the oven at 200 degrees.

Secrets of delicious pizza

1. To prepare thin and crispy pizza, place two baking sheets in a heated oven, with pizza on top and empty below.
2. The process of kneading dough requires a good mood; you can turn on music, but not loudly, but in the background.
3. The flour must be sifted so that the dough becomes homogeneous.
4. Fresh yeast is always better than dry yeast. But if they are missing, you can replace them.
5. When kneading the dough, add only half the flour at first, and mix in the rest gradually.
6. It is advisable to replace vegetable sunflower oil with olive oil. It has less aroma and will be invisible when baking.
7. The process of kneading the dough must be continued until it stops sticking to your hands. It must be remembered that the pizza should not tear at the stage of kneading and forming the base. The dough needs to be soft and elastic.

Bottom line

To sum it up, we can say that classic pizza can be prepared at home. You just need to follow some rules, and a persistent and attentive hostess will turn out to be an excellent Italian dinner. It’s not only possible, but also necessary to experiment with fillings. After all, classics love perfection.

Creating dough is real torture for me. Well, I don’t get along with it, especially with yeast, so the most ideal dough recipe for me is the simplest. Especially for pizza, which children love so much. I suggest you try it in action, or rather, when baking. A minimum of ingredients, rolling out as thin as possible and cutting all sorts of goodies - the pizza will turn out perfect!

To create the pizza, I will use smoked bacon, fresh mushrooms, hard cheese, tomatoes and olives, and also grease the base with mayonnaise. You can choose and purchase any other fillings to your liking.

If olive oil is not available, feel free to replace it with sunflower, corn, etc., even melted lard or butter, but remember that such a base will no longer be lean.

So, to prepare the classic thin dough for thin Italian pizza, you need to prepare the products according to the list.

Sift wheat flour into a deep salad bowl, pour in water, olive oil and add salt.

Knead the dough into a tight dough, press it into a ball, cover with cling film and leave for 15 minutes.

After that, roll it out into a thin, thin layer. Rectangular or round - as you wish. Place in a greased form.

Lubricate with mayonnaise. Lay out sliced ​​bacon and fresh champignons and tomatoes. Sprinkle with finely grated hard cheese and garnish with olives or black olives. Place the pizza in a preheated oven for 25 minutes at 180C.

The pizza is juicy and the base is crispy on the edges and soft in the middle. Garnish the toasted pizza with herbs and serve it to the table.

Well, be sure to bookmark the recipe for the classic dough for thin Italian pizza. Just remember to let the dough rest for 15 minutes after kneading!

Winter is getting closer and closer, so losing weight by summer is not yet relevant: on the contrary, having lost the opportunity to enjoy the abundance of fruits and berries, you should console yourself with something more serious. Relax.by has launched a series of articles from an Italian trattoria chef well known to Minsk residents La Scala Ignazio Rossa: the expert shares with us original recipes for the most popular Italian dishes, and at the same time shows how to cook an authentic masterpiece on a simple stove and in a home saucepan. First was the pasta , second ― , the third one is the same one . This time we are learning how to cook traditional pizza.

Pizza, without a doubt, is included in the list of must eat dishes and is the hallmark of culinary Italy along with pasta (its prototype appeared in Naples back in the 16th century after the import of tomatoes to Europe, and a century later they settled therespecial pizzaiolo people who knew how to cook it). The popularity of pizza, it seems, cannot subside: for example, guests of a familiar Minsk trattoria, it’s scary to imagine, eat almost 2.5 thousand pizzas a month.

― In Naples there is a famous pizzeria Da Michele (the queue there always stretches from the street itself), - says Ignazio.― The menu includes only two items - “Marinara” and “Margarita”.

The latter appeared, by the way, with the light hand of the local chef Raffaele Esposito: it was he who baked several versions of the dish for Queen Margherita of Savoy, and she liked the one that, in addition to flatbread, included only mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil more than others. This is how the most popular classic pizza, named after her, became known to the world.

- Pizza cannot have many ingredients: you must feel the taste of dough, tomatoes, cheese, and not a mix of various flavor flashes that drown out one another.

Also, says the chef, the ratio of dough to filling is important: no more, no less than 1/1 (or close to it). Moreover, both the abundance of dough and its shortage are bad: under a too heavy “cap” it simply will not bake properly.

Ingredients for the dough:

*this amount is enough for 3 flatbreads

• Drinking water (250 grams)

- You cannot add tap water to pizza dough: it has different hardness, which can be compensated by varying the amount of salt. Without knowing all the intricacies, just use drinking water.

• Salt (11-12 grams)
• Olive oil (15 grams)
• Flour (400 grams; one with less gluten is suitable, for example, the familiar “Lidskaya” premium grade)
• Live or dry yeast (15 or 6 grams, respectively)

Filling ingredients:

• Tomato sauce (110 grams)
• Ham (40 grams)
• Champignons (70 grams)
• Mozzarella cheese (for pizza; 100 grams)
• Oregano to taste
• Olive oil

Preparation

At Trattoria La Scala, pizza is baked for literally 3 minutes in a special oven at a temperature of almost 400°C. Maximum home oven― 280°C (and in fact, says Ignazio, 220°C), so in this case the dough should be kneaded less dense― add less flour and make sure that after kneading it remains a little sticky. And, of course, hold it longer.

01 Preparing the pizza base.Mix the salt thoroughly in the water by hand, add olive oil, yeast (Ignazio added the prepared dough) and flour.

― Yeast should not experience large temperature changes, so prepare it at room temperature before adding to other ingredients, ― warns the Italian.- By the way, you can replace them with the most ordinary beer.

The finished dough must be placed in a plastic container (sprinkled with a little flour: it will help it rise), and when it rises and falls, form several cakes, send them back and wait until it rises again, twice as much (and this is one of the key points in creating the perfect dough). You can start cooking after 2 hours. By the way, in order to get a standard pizza with a diameter of 33 centimeters, one flatbread should weigh about 250 grams.

You can cook in a mold or directly on a baking sheet; We do not lubricate both options with anything before baking: the dough already contains olive oil. Roll out the flatbread into a thin pizza base.

02 Fill with filling.The first to be added to the base is tomato sauce: it is made from tomatoes crushed in a blender in their own juice, olive oil and salt (to taste).

- The use of ketchups and sauces (not to mention mayonnaise) is the Americanization of pizza. Do not do it this way.

Hard pizza mozzarella is added next.

For her ― fresh sliced ​​mushrooms and ham.

Finishing touches― oregano and a few drops of olive oil.

So, one wonders why it turns out this way: you are going to make pizza, but it turns out hot sandwich? What do Italians put in their dough, or what secrets do they know that result in a thin, crispy base that melts in your mouth? Let's look into this issue. So, real pizza should be baked in wood stove. There the desired temperature regime is created (485 degrees). In such an oven, pizza is baked in one and a half minutes. But don't despair. We can approximate the conditions for baking products even in the presence of an ordinary oven - gas or electric. But Italian pizza dough requires the most effort. This is where you have to work. Because everything else - making up the filling and the baking process - is mere nonsense. So, put on an apron and get to work.

If you want your Italian pizza dough to be as close to perfect as possible, and you only have a gas oven at your disposal, stock up on two baking sheets. Place the mold with the product on top. Place an empty baking sheet underneath. It will heat up and release heat upward, thereby compensating for the rather low temperature of conventional ovens (up to 250 degrees). You can use a stone instead of a baking sheet. And, naturally, it is necessary to increase the baking time - about ten minutes. The crusts - those served in an Italian pizzeria - should be thin and moderately crispy. But there are many lovers of thick and fluffy dough. Externally, the product resembles an ordinary baked goods, but how satisfying! In some regions of Italy Pizza dough is made without yeast. Here we will look at a variety of recipes.

Take a not too large bowl and pour a glass of boiled warm water into it. Dissolve a pinch of salt and two teaspoons of sugar in it. Add the yeast. It is better that the bacterial culture is fresh. Then we need 25 grams. If you are using dry yeast, You will need one teaspoon. This is a dough. Sprinkle it with one tablespoon of flour. We put it in a place where it is warm and there are no drafts. When foam appears on the surface, it means the yeast has fermented and it’s time to prepare the dough for pizza. Italian recipe instructs us to pour two glasses of flour into a large bowl, salt it a little and pour in three soup spoons of oil (olive, of course). Add the dough to a large bowl. Let's start kneading. It is very important to feel the density of the dough with your hands. No cook will tell you exactly how much flour you will need - after all, the properties of different varieties are very different. The dough should become plastic and pliable. If it is too liquid, add more flour; if it is rubbery, add water. Knead for at least ten minutes.

Rolling out dough for authentic Italian pizza

This is a real art, since we don't have to use a rolling pin. But first you need to let the test come up. Grease a bowl with vegetable oil. Form the dough into a bun. We also grease it with oil and place it in a bowl. Cover with cling film and put in a warm place. What's happening? After an hour or an hour and a half, the dough will have risen to approximately three times in volume. We crush it and divide it into parts. Typically this amount of dough makes three pizza crusts. Grease a baking sheet with olive oil and preheat the oven to maximum. Sprinkle the countertop with flour and lay out the first piece of dough. We form a flat cake. Using your knuckles, pull it out over the edges until you get Italian pizza dough - thin in the middle, thicker at the edges. Stretch the cake and give it a round shape. Transfer to a baking sheet. Grease with tomato paste, decorate with filling, sprinkle with cheese. Curl the edges of the pizza up and place the baking sheet in the oven.

Lush cakes

This recipe also has its “adherents”. In a jug, mix a glass (225 ml) of warm water with two tablespoons of olive oil (you can use a mixer). In a large bowl, mix 300 grams of flour, a pinch of salt, and a teaspoon of dry yeast. Add water and oil from the jug. Knead until smooth. Place on a floured countertop. Continue kneading for about three more minutes. Transfer the bun to a bowl greased with olive oil, cover with film and place in a warm place protected from drafts. After forty minutes, when the fluffy Italian pizza dough has doubled in size, take it out and knead it again. Roll out with a rolling pin to make a circle with a diameter of 30 centimeters.

Yeast-free dough

This is exactly what the base should be like to make a real Italian pizza. Dough without yeast is made in various ways, but they all boil down to one thing: beer bacteria are replaced with fermented milk bacteria. Here is the first recipe: with sour cream. Beat two eggs with a spoon of salt. Dissolve soda in a glass of sour cream (on the tip of a knife). Melt two tablespoons of butter. We combine all three components. Gradually add two cups of flour and knead the dough. It should be elastic and pliable. Roll it out and place it on a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil. We decorate the pizza and bake it. The cakes will come out moderately fluffy.

Italian pizza dough without yeast (with milk)

In a large bowl, mix two cups of flour and a spoonful of salt. In a separate container, beat two eggs, warm milk (100 milliliters) and olive oil (two tablespoons, no more). Pour this mixture into the flour. Stir slightly until smooth. Transfer to a work surface sprinkled with flour. Knead for about ten minutes. The dough will be sticky at first, but will become smooth and elastic. Wet the towel with cold water until it is damp (but not wet). Wrap the bun in it and leave for a quarter of an hour. After this, knead and roll into a thin layer. This pizza base will come out crispy, like puff pastry.