Step one – Throw away any Pizza Hut, Domino’s or similar takeaway menu’s you have.  If you want a real Pizza and are not either in Italy or your local Italian restaurant then making your own pizza is simple and I can guarantee you’ll never go back!  You’ll walk past the frozen pizza aisle in the supermarket with a smug grin on your face.

Pizza really is one of the simplest recipes that deliver the best results and anyone can do this from home.  It’s dead easy to make your pizza dough or you can simply buy a pack of ‘pizza dough’ and simply add water.  I’ll show you how to make the dough here, as it really is a piece of cake (well bread really).

• 500g Flour (00 is best, or strong white bread flower works just fine
• 1tsp table salt
• 1tsp sugar
• 1tblspn olive oil
• 325ml warm water
• 1x7g yeast sachet

Sift the flour and salt onto a clean surface and make a well in the middle, add the water, sugar, oil and yeast to a jug and leave for a few minutes.  Add the water mixture to the well and carefully mix in the flour with a fork (go careful not to ‘breach’ the flour well or you’ll lose the water all over the table (as I did first time).  Mix all the ingredients together and kneed for a few minutes until smooth.  Leave in a floured bowl with a towel over for about an hour, or until the bread has doubled in size.  This will make 2 large or 3 medium pizza bases.  Simply break off a ‘ball’ and roll until about 12” diameter and nice and thin.  Be sure to keep lifting the dough and flouring so it does not stick.  Leave for about 10 minutes before you add the topping.

For the topping, the world really is your oyster, I always start with a tomato (passata works very well) sauce – not too much or it’ll go soggy, add mozzarella and then whatever you like.  A drizzle of olive oil, black pepper, then in the oven for about 10 minutes (250 deg or as hot as your oven will go).

I made some last night and had the luxury of a bread oven which was great we got the oven nice and hot, then pushed all the embers back and cooked on the stone base. I even made a wooden ‘paddle’ to get them in and out!  You can see a few more of my favourite pizza recipe ideas here.

Enjoy!