Pizza, my most favorite italian dish

homemade pizza

Fast Food, I love it. My favorite fast food must be Pizza I think. Did i read somewhere that Pizza is the world's most favorite food? They must be right. Even in China one can witness the victory that Pizza is currently having. In every big city you can find at least a couple of Pizza Hut already. By the way, did you know that Pizza Hut in China is a sit in restaurant that targets the potential rich clients? Well anyway, this is not to promote Pizza Hut or any fast food style kind of Pizza joint. When come to Pizza, I actually like to have it as authentic as possible. Thin crust, few but well selected toppings, fine balanced seasonings and roasted on a wood fired oven if possible. But that is not always possible. We are already lucky to have an oven at all. It is not yet common if you rent an apartment in China that it will come with an oven. So we had to venture out to the professional kitchen equipment market one day and buy a Pizza oven. My wife says that this was the best investment we ever did since we landed in China. Next to other things we will of course bake the occasional Pizza in this oven. Below you find a basic recipe on how to make a PIzza, the picture is from our last experiment making a spinach Pizza.


  How to make it?

The dough: This one is my favorite Pizza dough recipe: http://www.grouprecipes.com/46552/italian-thin-crust-pizza-dough.html. I know, the recipe follows an Austrian cook but since recently I disicovered that Austrians know quite a thing or two about a good Pizza. The dough is easy to do, it tastes really good and if you worked with dough before, it is quite all right to work with. But if you are just starting with cooking and dough making, you want to search for an easier recipe to work with.

The tomato sauce: The most important ingredient when it comes to making a good Pizza.

Ingredients:

• 1 can of Pizza tomatoes (if you want to replace those by fresh tomatoes, the Pizza just won't taste the same, so it's always better to have the canned stuff at home)
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper
• pinch of sugar
• 1 table spoon of vinegar
• oregano (take as much as you want, but don't be too stingy with that stuff :))
• onions
• garlic
• 125 ml red wine

how to make it: dice the onions, fry them on medium heat in hot olive oil till they turn see through. Then you add the garlic and fry for 30 seconds to quickly extract the Cavour, then you add the red wine. Just bring the whole stuff to a simmering temperature before you add the squashed tomatoes. After that you just add all the other ingredients. Now you let everything cook on a small flame and reduce until you got a consistent tomato paste with all the concentrated flavors that you can easily spread on your pizza dough.

After you worked the pizza dough on your Pizza baking tray, your oven form or your cookie sheet, if you have nothing else at hand. Now you add the tomato paste on your dough and spread it so the whole dough with be covered thinly with your sauce. Then you add your most favorite topping in this sequence: first the cheese, then veggies and then the meat (on top of all of this i normally add a good tablespoon of dried oregano on top, just gives the Pizza that certain Italian taste).

After this, you pop the pizza in the preheated oven. The oven should be HOT. You can preheat it at 350 Celsius or higher if you can. Then you bake the Pizza for 10 - 12 minutes until crisp and the cheese melted nicely. Now all you have to do is lean back and enjoy.