Ok, it just got real here, sports fans. I just made pizza, and not the kind of thing you think "homemade pizza, oh prebaked crust and parmesan from a tube", but, like. Real. Live. Actual. Pizza. We're talkin' pizzeria level shit here. That I made. Myself. I made it.
Enough self-aggrandising, girl, and tell us what you're talking about! Right, well, awhile back, I saw an episode of Today's Gourmet with Jacques Pépin on Youtube (Invidious, actually) where he was making a pizza, but he was putting stuff like asparagus and duck and stuff onto it. The pizza itself wasn't interesting to me, however, his crust recipe was what brought me to the yard. He also said you could make breadsticks or even loaves of bread with it, and all he used was a food processor and a prep-bowl. No floured boards or rolling pins or anything, and I'd been looking for an easy bread recipe since forever. I've made quite a few loaves of the densest, most satisfying homestyle bread you can possibly imagine using his recipe, but I never used it for pizza crust...
...until last night.
The pizza that resulted was easily the best thing I've ever cooked in my life. The olive oil made it crispy, the cheese browned ever-so-slightly, the capsicums and olives played off the beef-substitute soy crumblies like a seasoned soprano and her tenor, and the best part? It passed the Cold Pizza test so hard it totally demolished every commercial pizza I've ever eaten. I opened the storage bag I'd saved it in and I genuinely smelled Papa John's, only better. I made the most sexual, orgasmic sounds when I ate that cold pizza just now, I hope I didn't wake up my roommate.
Anyway, I bet you want to make this now, don't you? Please do! And thank Jacques Pépin for me!
Crust.
1 cup room-temperature water
1 packet active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Pour the water into your food processor, then add the yeast and sugar. Cover it tightly and leave it to proof for 10 minutes (15 if your yeast is a bit on the old side). Once the time is up, add these to the processor bowl...
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Blitz the ingredients until it forms a tight dough ball. Add about a teaspoon of cooking oil to a mixing bowl and use a paper towel to skoosh it all around the bottom. Don't go up the sides though! The dough needs something to cling to while it's rising, after all. Cover with plastic wrap and leave it in a relatively warm, dry place to rise for 1 hour.
After an hour, lift the plastic wrap off the bowl (keep it clean, 'cos we're gonna need it again) and wet your hands with water. Next, "pound" the dough by forming it into a ball again. "Pound" just means "stop this rise", not physically demolishing it with a hammer or anything. Forming the risen dough into a ball is enough here. Next, leave it in the bowl, covered again, to rise a 2nd time for another hour.
After the 2nd hour, "pound" the dough again and set it onto a cutting board with flour on it. "Didn't you say we didn't need a floured board a minute ago?" That was when we were making bread. We're making pizza crust right now, so the floured board needs to happen. Using a bench scraper or a butcher knife, cut the dough in half and form both into a ball.
At this point, we can stick these into the fridge to use later if we want to. In this case, put the doughballs onto a baking tray so they aren't touching each other and cover them with plastic wrap. Then stick'em in the fridge for up to 3 days. But let's carry on with the pizza.
Pizza.
1 prepared doughball
1.5 cups grated mozzarella cheese
1 tin of spaghetti sauce, to which add...
~1 tablespoon each of Garlic powder, Onion powder, dried Parsely, and dried Oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/16 teaspoon cinnamon
1 shot Tabasco sauce
Don't laugh—I'm deadly serious about that cinnamon. Any less and you won't get the flavour effect we're looking for, any more and your whole pizza will taste like cinnamon. 1/16 of a teaspoon. Also, 1 shot of Tabasco is like 4 drops. It's not going to make the pizza sauce hellfire hot. It's not even going to be noticeably hot. All the Tabasco does is activate the chili powder, otherwise you won't taste it at all. You can stir all the sauce seasonings together in an empty cottage cheese container. That way you can store the leftover sauce right in the prep bowl.
Preheat your oven to 400°F. Set one of the doughballs aside and smack some cornmeal onto a pizza pan. Why the cornmeal? It'll stop the dough sticking to the pan. I guess you could use oil, but only if you're using a cast-iron tray. For steel or glass, definitely go with cornmeal. On your floury board, use a floured rolling pin to roll your dough into a circle, then put it onto the pizza pan. If it's too large for the pan, just crimp the edges. If it's not large enough, just spread the dough out some more with your hands. Drizzle some olive oil or cooking oil onto the dough (about a teaspoon's worth) and spread it out with your hand. Hey, your hands are already doughy and floury—might as well make one of them oily, too!
Put 6 tablespoons of sauce onto the crust and spread it out so there's about an inch or so of space for you to hold onto the pizza while you're eating it later. You can use your hand again if you want to, or you can use the spoon or a silicone spatula. So... what kind of toppings are we thinkin' about here? Me, I like diced capsicum, sliced scallion whites, brined black olives, and ground beef substitute. If you're not Jewish, you can use regular ground beef scrambled with garlic powder, onion powder, and seasoned salt. I'm not going to give you a list of toppings, because you already know what you want on your pizza. Assemble the pizza by adding your toppings before adding the cheese. You can put a scattering of toppings on top of the cheese if you want, just to help onlookers identify what's underneath all that.
Also—and I know this is gonna sound weird coming from me—resist the urge to put heaping great piles of cheese onto your pizza. Limit yourself to 1.5 cups. It'll cook more evenly without all that cheese weighing it down, and it'll taste better if you can actually taste the toppings.
Once your oven has preheated, bake the pizza at the same temperature for about 15 minutes. We're looking for cheese that is golden brown. If it's not golden brown after 15 minutes, give it another 5 minutes.
Then, remove from the oven and let stand for 10 minutes before cutting it into 8 wedges and eating it while you play Animal Crossing. Refrigerate any leftover pizza and marvel at the amazing awesomeness that is pizza for breakfast.