The correct "Margarita"
Recently, at the request of Neapolitan pizza, the European Union passed a law on pizza. It says that it should not be more than 35 cm in diameter, not more than 3 mm in thickness, made only from tomatoes of Sanmardzano and Mozzarella from buffalo milk, and baked in a wood oven (pizzerias that fulfill the conditions, it is allowed to put a mark of quality STG). Naturally, at home it is impossible to cook an ideal Neapolitan pizza, but still you can try to get as close to the original recipe as possible - knead the right dough, make a fragrant tomato sauce, buy the necessary mozzarella and spices.
Steep batch
Pizza today can easily be ordered with delivery to the house, but as the Italians say: "If you want the dish to be tasty, cook it yourself." First mix yeast dough for a flat cake. Take 250 g of white flour (add some flour from the hard wheat varieties on the Apennines) and sow it to make the pizza softer and tender. Then add 10 grams of sea salt and sugar and two bags of dry yeast. Pour into this mixture 125 g of water, diluted with 10 g of extra virgin olive oil (use warm water, otherwise the dough will rise badly). Thoroughly mix the mass and, if necessary, add water or flour until it starts to fall off the hands. Then leave the dough to rise for an hour at room temperature (or longer if the yeast is not high-speed). When it's right, make a cake with a diameter of about 10 cm and a thickness of 2 cm, apply it and start rolling it out. Professional pizza-yolo do this only with his hands and even twist the dough on one finger over his head (as it is saturated with oxygen and becomes more airy), but you can also use a rolling pin. True, after it disappears a very important element of pizza - the edge. However, without the filling in the oven, it will still rise slightly and form, the main thing - try to make the right circle with a diameter of about 35 cm and a thickness of 2-3 mm. This is a classic version of pizza, but you can easily roll out a cake of larger or smaller size, bake it on a baking sheet covered with parchment, or in a special mold. Many Italian housewives prefer to cook a rectangular pizza at home (pizza in teglia) - more yeast is put in it and a dough is made 1 cm thick.
Sauce - just not from ketchup
Almost all pizza (except for the so-called "white", which put only cheese) is smeared with sauce. The main thing - do not use tomato paste (it is too concentrated) or ketchup (instead of tomatoes, it may be apple puree, flavored with preservatives). It is best to take fresh aromatic tomatoes, dip them into boiling water, then into icy water and peel off the skin. Then grind the fruit in a blender to a puree and put out with the addition of salt and Mediterranean seasonings - oregano and green basil. However, most Italian pizza chefs use tomatoes in their own juice. Of these, the sauce is even more tender than fresh. Tomatoes peeled, add fragrant herbs and crushed in a blender, then laid out on the rolled dough, leaving only a 1-2 cm edge clean. Cover the cake with a sauce evenly and thinly, not greedy or overdoing, otherwise the dough will turn out to be dry or, vice versa , too wet.
Pizza-bottom
When a person takes a slice of the finished pizza, the cheese should break in time and easily release the piece, rather than stretch from it with long viscous threads. According to the Italian pizza-yolo, who have been preparing their national dish for more than one century, these requirements are best served by semi-solid mozzarella, made specifically for pizza. Just do not confuse it with the balls in the brine, which are sold in bags. Pizza-chees is realized in the form of bars in vacuum bags, it is less damp and greasy. If you put a pickled mozzarella on a cake, she will give a lot of liquid, and the pizza will turn damp. If you take a domestic semi-hard cheese such as Dutch, noticeably save, but you will get a crust on the surface or excessively stretching threads. In general, you can not create an Italian dish without mozzarella. Cheese should be cut into cubes about 1 x 1 cm, sprinkled over tomato sauce, add green basil with oregano and send "Margarita" to the oven.
Very hot!
In wood ovens, which are used by professional pizza-yolo, the temperature reaches +4000 C, so pizza in them is cooked in a matter of minutes, acquires an incomparable aroma and is covered with a characteristic crust. Alas, this is never achieved in a conventional oven ... Nevertheless, try to heat your oven as much as possible, turn on the convector for more circulation of hot air and only then put pizza in it. In the oven at +250 C, it is baked for about 15-20 minutes, but it is better to monitor the readiness yourself, because the process depends on the operation of the equipment, and on the size of the flat cake. If you overstrain the thin dough, it will dry and look like a cracker. If you do not cook a thick pizza with a rich filling, it will just be inedible. The correct cake should be thin, soft and juicy, moderately moist and with a pleasant, slightly crispy crust. Sprinkle it with olive oil, cut into pieces with a knife-roller and taste it until it's warm: take a fragrant triangle, fold it twice so the filling is inside (it should not break with a good pizza), and enjoy the taste.
Open and closed
No wonder "Margarita" is called "the mother of all Italian pizzas". You can put mushrooms, ham, Bulgarian pepper, cauliflower, fish, prawns, mussels, truffles, capers or other products on it (naturally, not baked) - and new dishes will turn out. By the way, pizza can be both open and closed, both baked in the oven, and deep fried.
Filling rule
The inhabitants of the Apennines are simply marveling at what kind of pizza they manage to cook some domestic pizza. For example. "Four cheeses" in Italian - this is a flat cake, which is put first mozzarella. then Parmesan, then Pecorino and Gorgonzola. There is no Russian, Dutch, edam, much less Dor-blue in the classic Four Cheese. Boiled sausages and doctor sausages are also a purely Russian invention, because in Italy they use local high-quality hams such as prosciutto di parma and bresaola. However, you yourself have the right to choose the products suitable for the purse and decide what your pizza will be - Italian or Russian, Russian. The main thing - do not forget the basic rule of this dish: it is baked very quickly, so all the ingredients must be semi-finished. If you put vegetables, pre-brew them, mushrooms, chicken and meat, fry, fish and seafood blanch. If you want to speed up the process, take only the finished products (for example, ham, olives, capers or canned tuna) or fruits that can be used fresh (tomatoes and peppers). By the way, in Italy, a very popular variant of pizza is when a cake with sauce and cheese is baked, and then raw ingredients are put on the ready "Margarita", for example thin slices of ham, green salad leaves and grated parmesan.
Calzone and pantseroto
In Naples, an open pizza was born, and in Rome came up with a closed version called calzone. Dough, sauce and cheese for him are exactly the same as for "Margarita", only they are laid out on half a piece of cake. Then add other ingredients - for example, lightly fried prawns with garlic, oregano and basil. Then the big "pelmen" closes, is protected, so that not a single hole remains, it is smeared with olive oil to create a mouth-watering ruddy crust and baked. However, in Italy there is another option of a closed pizza - pancerotto. It is made much less than a calzone and is not cooked in the oven, but is deep-fried.
Pizza with apples! Pizza as a fast, tasty and satisfying dish has taken root in many countries, but in some of them has changed so much that the Italians no longer recognize their national dish. Americans invented Hawaiian pizza, putting on the "Margarita" local ham and pieces of pineapple. Residents of the Land of the Rising Sun went even further - the Japanese oeconomiaki cake is made with pork, rice noodles, vegetables and seafood, served with soy sauce and sprinkled with dried shavings of tuna. In Europe you can often find sweet fruit pizzas. Perhaps one of the best is with apples. To cook it, melt 1 tbsp. a spoon of butter and fry on it cut into semicircles slices of 2 apples together with 1 tbsp. a spoonful of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and a few drops of lemon juice. The mixture caramelizes, becomes sweet, viscous and very tasty. Then lay the apples on a standard dough for pizza (naturally, without tomatoes and cheese) and bake in a preheated oven for up to + 200 ° C for 5 minutes. Serve slices of sweet cakes best with an ice cream ball.
Closed pizza "calzone"
Ingredients:
- flour-250 g
- water-125 g
- sugar 10 g
- salt-8g
- dry yeast -12 g
- olive oil - 10 g
For filling:
- tomatoes in own juice -60 g
- mozzarella for pizza - 120 g
- champignons-50
- ham -60 g
Cooking method:
Make a dough for pizza. Mix the flour with yeast, salt and sugar. Add olive oil to the water. Dry ingredients pour on the table, pour the oily water and knead the dough with hands. Put the ready boll in the bowl, cover the film and let it rise for two hours at room temperature.
Secret:
1. This amount of test is enough for about 2 pizzas. 2. Roll out the dough as a circle with a diameter of approximately 40 cm and a thickness of 2-mm. The edge should turn out to be thicker, so pizza is better to roll out with your hands, not with a rolling pin. 3. Put tomato sauce on half the finished dough. To make it, the tomatoes in their own juice should be peeled and blended with a pinch of salt, oregano and a few drops of olive oil. 4. Put tomato sauce mozzarella for pizza, cut into thin strips. 5. Make a layer of finely chopped ham and pre-fried mushrooms. 6. Cover the filling with the second half of the dough (like a big dumpling) and carefully pierce the edges of the pizza (if you leave holes, the stuffing will flow out). Bake the calzone for 15 minutes at + 220 ° C and before serving with olive oil.
Pizza with Parma ham and rucola
Ingredients:
- flour-850 g
- water-0.5 l
- yeast-12 g
- olive oil-25 g
- salt-25 g
- sugar-25 g
For filling:
- mozzarella for pizza
- tomatoes in own juice - 100 g
- Parma ham-50 g
- Parmesan-30 g
- arugula - 10g
Cooking method:
1. Make a yeast dough and roll out of it (100 g) a pizza base with a diameter of 30-33 cm and a thickness of 1-2 mm.
Secret:
1. The test is enough for 15 pizzas. 2. Spread tomato sauce on the dough. To make the sauce, try a tomato blender in your own skin without skin, together with a pinch of salt, a little olive oil and basil. 3. Put the mozzarella on the pizza. 4. Bake the dish for 15 minutes at + 220 ° C. 5. Put thinly sliced slices of Parma ham into the finished pizza. 6. Add the rucola and sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.