Thorburn Familia Pizza

So it seems the gauntlet has been thrown down in the high stakes world of homemade pizzas. Sure, Kaz has a good recipe, the ability to actually make circular pizzas and attractive photos, but I've... got jalapenos and olives? And we're more traditional as we have Familia in the name and I'm from Italy. Western Sydney's a part of Italy, right?

In all honesty, we're only new at making pizzas, having for years subsided on the poor fare from chain restaurants and the like. We splashed out on a neat pizza oven with a baking stone, but still were lazy and just bought premade bases from the supermarket like the mugs we were. One day, however, we had a couple too many drinks and thought: 

"Hell, I used to work at Dominos and make dough, and it was piss easy. Surely I can do that now!"

Of course, this assumed we had any ingredients. Since we didn't, we staggered down to the shops to buy yeast, flour and water, although we then realised we own taps that provide free water (and possibly yeast) so we didn't need to buy that. We also bought as many ingredients as we thought we could put on in interesting ways.

To make the dough we started by mixing yeast and caster sugar (just a little) with warm water and putting it aside for a short time to let the mystical bubbling process occur. Please take note of the technical terms in my recipe, and if you need clarification please google for a better recipe. One with amounts and times, for example. Whilst this is bubbling away put flour into a big mixing bowl, making a hollow in the centre. Once it's been 5 minutes or so and the bubbling mixture is going for its life, pour it into the hollow. Use a butter knife or similar to mix it into the flour, continuing until you've got a nice lump of dough. 

Once it's all mixed together, take it out and put it on a prefloured surface (we use our granite counter) and beat/knead it for a while until it's thoroughly beaten or you get bored/tired. Put it in a lightly greased bowl and cover it. Leave it for a few hours so it can rise. The amount of time depends on how much self control you have as it'll start smelling good, and since you're probably drunk at this point you'll have no ability to stop yourself eating it immediately. Try to hold out as long as possible.

Once you give up, take it out and pull it into a few pieces. With our normal measurements we get 3 pizzas, but you can scale up and down easily (especially since I haven't mentioned any measurements). For each blob of dough, roll and pound it into a ball and then roll it into a pizza shape. We're not fancypants like Kaz who make pretty circles - we instead make whatever shape we find the dough naturally goes in. It's because we're authentic and artistic, and not a hint that we're hacks who can't do things properly. I like to think the random edges give it character. 

Once it's in the rough pizza shape, you can add ingredients. We always put the pizza sauce on first, followed by a layer of cheese. A nice mix of mozzarella and tasty gives a good mix of tastes that works well with most toppings. Next up is whatever toppings you like, followed by spices and a light sprinkling of cheese on top. We then put it in the prewarmed pizza oven (remember to prewarm the pizza oven) for 10 minutes on medium and then 5 minutes on high. The stone gives it an awesome crunchy and flavoursome base, enriched with the oils from pizzas past. I'd heavily recommend getting a pizza stone as they instantly make any pizza 100% better. Take it out, cut it up, devour. Simple as that. 

Here are a few recent creations:

One of mine, with chorizo, chilli, black olives and jalapenos. Nice and spicy. I mixed some herbs into the dough which gave it an interesting garlicky aftertaste.

Sam's pizza: a ham and pineapple. Erk. Stupid fruit.

Another of mine, with pepperoni and jalapenos and four different cheeses. I do so love cheese.

So there, Kaz - your move! :P