Pizza

"I'm combining two recipes for dough," says Raul. "It is important to research and that will save time in the long run. My mom used to send me for dough at the bakery. Every Saturday for a year that was my job, go for dough and then make pizza for everyone. This recipe is from ricardocuisine.com with some advice from lidia added. And some thoughts from my all time favourite cooking website cookingforengineers.com. I'm adding the water in two portions ten minutes apart - for proper bread making you first create a sponge and then it picks up the water properly so there are no lumps. And Lidia says not to roll the dough out, just pat it down. Why spend all that time inflating it and then flatten it out?"

Pizza Dough à la ricardocuisine.com

Preparation time: 10 min
Waiting: 1 h
Output: two 35-cm (14-inch) pizzas

310 ml (1 1/4 cups) water, lukewarm

15 ml (1 tablespoon) olive oil

15 ml (1 tablespoon) honey

680 ml (2 3/4 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour

10 ml (2 teaspoon) instant dry yeast (or pizza yeast)

2.5 ml (1/2 teaspoon) salt

1. In a bowl, combine the water, oil, and honey. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, with a wooden spoon, or in a stand mixer (using the dough hook), combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water mixture and stir until it forms a soft ball. Knead the dough for about 3 minutes in the stand mixer or on a floured surface.

3. Place the dough in a clean and lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm and humid place for about 1 hour or until the dough doubles in size.

Use the dough immediately or cover with plastic wrap. Keep in the refrigerator for up to 12 hours. Otherwise, freeze it.

The pizza dough spreads evenly and smoothly. Raul covers it with a thin layer of ketchup. He then adds a mixture of shredded mozzarella cheese, grated Parmesan cheese, Greek oregano and Onion Crunch. He then sprinkles the pizza with sliced mushrooms and pre-cooked Italian sausage which he is delighted to announce were 40 percent off. A sprinkling of black pepper and the pizza is ready to go into the pre-heated oven at 500 degrees. "The whole key is to have it hot," notes Raul. "That way the crust puffs and is crunchy. Normally a pizza oven is 700 degrees but we'll just have to do the best we can. There was a guy who was able to achieve 700 degrees by over-riding the latch system on a self-cleaning oven . . ." Drew gets ready to get between Raul and the toolbox but then remembers that this oven is not self-cleaning.

Fourteen minutes later the cheese is bubbling and the crust is golden brown. "It's a bit sweet from the ketchup," remarks Drew. "And the Onion Crunch."

"You can feed it to the dog and run down the street for takeout pizza," replies Raul.

"The dough could not be more perfect," says Drew crunching contentedly.