Cooking Class: Pizza

Friday still seems to be my pizza day (well, one of my pizza days) be it either for lunch with the coworkers or for an easy dinner pick up before I climb my stairs. Here in Italy though, pizza is much more the Saturday night meal of choice. I'm not sure why that is...maybe because it's easy meal before the Sunday feast?

Tonight's cooking class was one that I'd be waiting for- PIZZA!

Well, it was take one for learning how to make pizza. Granted it was more like an episode of Martha Stewart where we mixed everything together and then magically the chef pulled out a huge tray of pizza dough ready for pizza-ing but that's how you have to do it when it takes about 2 hours for the dough to rise in the dead of winter and hail is falling from the sky.

Pizza dough is super easy to make so I recommend giving it a try if you haven't before. Need a recipe? Try this authentic one that I learned tonight.

Pizza Dough (*Winter Recipe)
1kg flour
50g yeast
1cup (or so) warm water
1/2 a huge ladle of olive oil (best guess 2/3 cup)

Mix it all together (with your hands of course) until it all pulls together. Set aside for approximately 2 hours until it's increased in size.

One trick with real pizza is the crust is really thin. It's fabulously crispy with (all) the olive oil once baked so give it a try. You'll need to roll it out (with a rolling pin) and add flour as necessary so it doesn't get all over. Once in the oil (olive) coated pan, prick the dough with a fork all over to ensure no bubbles take over.

*In the summer (or warmer weather) you only use 25g of yeast and you can use cold water. People in Monterey, I think you should stick with the winter version!

We made several types of pizza:

• Marinara: sliced garlic gloves, marinara sauce, drizzle of olive oil
• Margherita: marinara sauce, light coating of shredded Parmesan, a tad of basil (add mozzarella di bufala after pulled from oven)
• Biancaneve: "cooking cream" from a box, corn kernels, cheese and drizzle of olive oil (translates to "Snow White")
• Siciliana: marinara sauce, fried eggplant (sauteed), cubed provolone cheese, and yep, olive oil
• And then that one that seems to be on every menu, except for my pizza place downstairs...the Siciliana with potato wedges 1/2 cooked

Once loaded (well, not really by American pizza standards) bake at 180C for about 20 minutes. Yeah, sorry for all the metric measurements, it's only going to get worse! 

There you have it! Of course if you really want to just make it pepperoni or throw even more veggies on it go for it. I think my favorite pizza still is the Sicilian but once the weather warms back up a tad I'll be switching back to the baby tomatoes, rocket, yummy cheese, and prosciutto crudo because it's like a salad on bread, and it doesn't get much better than that.