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February 21, 2009

Pizza: search completed!

There are many types of pizza out there, but my favourite is the pizza napoletana that may not be thicker than 3 mm and it must be baked for 60–90 seconds in a 485 °C stone oven with an oak-wood fire. Of course in no way one can ever bake the perfect pizza at home because of the high temperature that is needed, but at least I have a stone in the oven, so that is half of the success. In our village there is a pizza stand that opens once in a month and there I have had the best pizza ever, at least so far. But who wants to wait for moment of their opening every month? Especially not, if you are foodie, you just need the challenge to bake it. Sure you are going to be disappointed on the way to your perfect pizza but the day will come where you gonna find it! The authentic Neapolitan pizza is made with local ingredients like San Marzano tomatoes and Mozzarella di Bufala, however today I chose Prosciutto di Parma and baby artichokes for topping. So meanwhile I was searching for the perfect recipe since quite a long time, but some weeks ago I have found it! It is not a surprise if I tell you that it was right in front of my nose in Locatelli's fabulous cookbook. Today, I used a cookie cutter to have them look like Locatelli's Pizzette, or at least kind of...


Ingredients:
375 g flour
200 g lukewarm water
4 tablespoon olive oil

10 g fresh yeast
10 g salt
For the sauce:
200 g canned tomates
1 tablespoon olive oil

1 garlic clove
handful of basil leaves
1/4 teaspoon oregano
a pinch of sugar

salt, pepper


For the sauce heat olive oil add sliced garlic and fry until golden brown. Pour canned tomatoes into the frying pan, add basil and bring it to boil. Remove from the heat and sieve. Bring it to cook again, add oregano, sugar (if needed), salt, pepper and cook it until it is thick enough to spread it on a pizza. Set aside and let it cool.


For the dough mix all ingredients together and knead a smooth dough, it takes about 10 minutes. After you need to work with it like with the grissini: Turn the dough out onto a clean surface and stretch into a rectangle. Work your way over the entire surface of the dough making deep indentations with eight fingers at once. When the surface of the dough is covered with indentations, fold it in half turn it ninety degrees, stretch it out to an A4 sized rectangle and repeat the indentation making process again. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes, and now you can cut into the portions you want it. The dough need to rest for at least 4 hours in the fridge before using it, but not longer then 8! Heat your oven to the highest degree and bake them.

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