Making pizza base at home is not at all a difficult task. Though I can’t make it like professionals by throwing it in air and simply roll them by a rolling pin, it doesn’t make much difference. The recipes below describe how to make pizza dough and base and also a no-cook pizza sauce.

Ingredients for Pizza base (for two 9″/23 cm. pizza base):

1. Plain flour – 230 gm.
2. Easy-blend dry yeast – 1½ teaspoon
3. Salt – ½ teaspoon
4. Sugar – ½ tbspoon
5. Olive oil – 1 tbspoon
6. Lukewarm water – 150 ml. (40ºC – 50ºC)

Procedure :

Dissolve the sugar in hot water and stir in the yeast. Leave the mixture for 10 minutes in covered condition. By then if foam appears at the top of mixture, you are confirmed that yeast is properly activated. Otherwise you have to repeat the whole process.

Transfer this liquid mixture in a large bowl, add olive oil.

Mix salt with the flour and gradually add it to liquid mixture in order to form a dough. You can make the dough in a stand mixer or hand mixer with “dough hook” attachment or simply using a wooden spoon or  floured hands. At this point the dough will remain soft and sticky.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead well for 5 minutes, until smooth and elastic (add little flour if the dough is very sticky and difficult to handle).

Divide the dough into two equal parts and place in two spacious bowls, greased with olive oil. Cover them with lightly oiled clingfilm and let rise in a warm place for about 1.5-2 hours, or until double in size. I always keep it in my oven while switched off.

Turn out each dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knock down. Knead briefly and roll out into a 5 mm./¼ inch thick and 23 cm./9 inch diameter circle.

Your pizza base is ready to use. 🙂

Note :

1.  You can make the dough one night before and keep it in the refrigerator for cold fermentation. In that case take out the dough from the refrigerator 2 hours before making the pizza and leave it at room temperature for rising.
2. If you like your pizza to be more crispy then roll out the base a bit thinner. On the other hand if you like it to be softer then you can reduce the base diameter  by few cm.

Ingredients for Pizza sauce :

1. Tomato (small) – 1
2. Oregano – ½ teaspoon
3. Dry basil – ½ teaspoon
4. Garlic powder – ¼ teaspoon
5. Onion powder – ½ teaspoon
6. Black pepper crushed/powder – ½ teaspoon
7. Salt & sugar to taste

Procedure :

Roughly chop the tomato and blend to a fine puree.

Mix all the remaining ingredients to the tomato puree and your homemade pizza sauce is ready to use.

Note :

1. Instead of fresh tomato you can also use  tomato puree or tomato sauce found in the market.