pizza!
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ingredients:
- 1 1/8 cups of all-purpose or bread flour (use the bread flour)
- 1/8 cup olive oil
- a pinch of salt
- 1/4 teaspoon of yeast
- 1/4 cup of water
- half a teaspoon of sugar
- 3 tbsp tomato paste (or 2 tbsp basil pesto, choose that - notes on sauce at the end)
- 1/6 to 1/4 cup marinated string cheese, grated
- 1/4 to 1/3 cup real mozzerella cheese, grated
- one big basil leaf
- about 3 teaspoons of corn meal, or flour
and then...
some more olive oil
1/10 of a red pepper
1/6 of an onion that's the size of a lacrosse ball
Mix flour, the first measurement of olive oil, salt, water, yeast, and sugar, until at an even consistency all around. Knead until very, very stretchy (about 8 minutes), dipping your hand into cold water while kneading as soon as the dough starts to stick to it. Leave in the fridge for a day or two, as a rolled-up ball, covered with plastic. Kneading it means you're going to put your hands in it and squeeze it around a lot. Wash your hands.
Go ride a bike. It's a nice day outside. Stretch out the dough with your hands (squeezing fingers-to-palm around the edges) until it's about 8 inches across, and then place it on top of a flour-covered counter (not too much, you don't want the bottom of the pizza to be grainy). Leave a bit of extra dough around the edges. Wait about an hour and a half. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Stretch the dough out an extra inch or so. Coat the pan (you're cooking this in a pan!) with a teaspoon of olive oil, and throw the dough on it. Cover the dough with a thin layer of olive oil (about 3/4tsp over the whole thing, spread with fingers or a brush). Spoon on the sauce (tomato or pesto in this recipe), making sure it's evenly distributed. Grate the monterey cheese, the mozzerella cheese, and hell, add some cheddar while you're at it, who gives a piss. Chop and fry up the onions and peppers (quickly!) and dump them evenly across the pizza. Throw that shit in the oven for about eight minutes, take it out as soon as the cheese and crust just start to brown (the cheese will do that a little bit quicker).
You should probably make more dough at once than this - it's a pain to repeat. You can freeze the dough for a few months, thawing it for a day or so before you make a pizza.
Now about the sauce - tomato paste is fine if you're very lazy, but what you should really do is fry onions, add a little garlic, and then dump them in a can's worth of tomato paste, throw in oregano, sea salt, a little bit of black pepper, brown sugar, basil, and if you're feeling adventurous, stuff like paprika, chili powder, and so on. Throw it in the blender when you're done, so the chunks are small (but still there), if your tomato paste came chunky. Tomato is one of the least pleasant things to bite into a chunk of in a pizza.