DIY Pizza

I used to be a regular customer of Domino's pizza.

One night I ordered a large "half and half" style pizza and what arrived looked like a mosaic of the Eye of Sauron made out of leftover pizza slices of various sizes. Or maybe the result of taking a 100 piece jigsaw and a 1,000 piece jigsaw and putting the pieces together. Eighteen quid for that!

I phoned up and they weren't even remotely interested. Three months of me chasing up unanswered emails later, an envelope arrived through the post with a Domino compliments slip upon which someone had scrawled "one free large pizza". No email, no letter, just a note that screamed "Here! Will this shut you up?"
I went into the shop with my voucher and as I stood watching them take blob of dough from a crate and put it through their production line, I thought: "I could do that".

And that was the end of me spending £18 a whup on pizzas as now I make my own stuffed crust version. My family prefer mine over any of the big brand deliveries and ask for it on birthdays and the like. Here is my recipe:

Equipment & Special Ingredients

I use a mixer and dough hook, so the recipe is written with that in mind. Without that, the dough will require kneading for at least 5 minutes.

This is my pizza tray. I bought this because any other "14 inch" pizza tray I ordered was just a 12 inch pizza tray with a really wide brim.

I buy these frozen mozarella sticks from KRK Bros Cash & Carry as well as their pepperoni. Coarse Semolina is also essential for that professional touch.

The Dough

This makes a 14" pizza base that's thick enough to make me think it should probably be a 16" base if I'm honest.

• 163ml warm Water
• 25ml Milk
• 12ml Olive Oil (a glug)
• 1 tsp Salt
• 325g Strong White Bread Flour
• 7g sachet Dried Yeast (one sachet is enough even if you are doubling the ingredients)
• pinch of Sugar
• 1 tsp of herbs such as Oregano or Basil

Get some tepid to warm water ready, put the mixing bowl on your scales and pour in 163g of water. You do know that 1 litre of water weighs a kilogram, right?

Add the milk, olive oil and salt. If you double the above quantities so as to make two or more pizzas, you can use a bar jigger to measure the milk and olive oil.

Put the flour on top of the liquids, make a crater in it and pour in the yeast sachet. Put a small pinch of sugar directly on to the yeast.

Add the herbs for extra flavour, if you want.

Switch on your dough hook for at least 5 minutes. More like 7 or 8. After this time, the dough will feel nice and stretchy if you give it a quick knead.

Grease the bowl (with one of those one cal frying sprays for example), replace the dough and cover the bowl with cling film or a cloth.

Put it in your favourite dough rising place (e.g. the light only NO HEAT setting of your oven) for an hour and a half. If it hasn't doubled in size by then, leave it some more.

When the dough has doubled, put a pile of coarse semolina on your work surface and coat the dough in this instead of flour to stop it sticking.

Roll it out to about the size of your tray, then drape it over the tray and tease and stretch out the edges so they are hanging over.

Stuff the crust by putting a mozarella stick in the flappy, dangly bit and rolling it up. Use the edge of the tray as a guide to help you get a professional looking circle.

Make your way round, butting the cheese sticks up end to end so they help keep the shape. I've developed a technique of pressing down quite firmly on the rolled dough and then lifting it back up off the tray just to make sure it hasn't extruded through the holes, then dropping it again.

Go round an extra two or three times to shape and close your stuffed crust (I have tried this with hot dogs and it's great, although the pizza was more of an octagon shape than a circle).

Set this aside again and start on the topping. You are aiming for about half an hour of proving time for the dough.

My Go To Topping

• the nearest jar of tomatoey stuff
• 200-250g pack of Mozarella
• a dusting of Parmesan
• a sprinkling of Oregano
• 28 slices of Pepperoni
• mix of finely chopped onion and green pepper
• chopped black olives

What is there to teach about topping a pizza? I take a few spoonfuls of tomato/bolognese sauce out of a jar. I'm a bit generous with the cheese there probably, but what are you going to do with the leftover dregs of a packet anyway? The pepperoni slices should touch each other and I've figured out a pattern that works well with a pizza that's going to be cut into 8 slices.

I find the pizza needs to go into a 200 degree fan oven for 15 minutes or so.

And there you have a crowd pleaser of a pizza with all the taste and calories of a dedicated takeaway.