Sure, ordering pizza is fun but have you tried making your own at home?
This Italian culinary favorite is wildly customizable. You can pretty much top your dough with anything—but, of course, ask family members or friends first of their preference. (Some people hate pineapples on their pizza *shrugs*).
[READ: Forget pineapples on pizza. This recipe puts lychee on toast and it works!]At the bare minimum, pizza is dough slathered with tomato sauce then topped with cheese and herbs—a margherita, if you may. It’s fool-proof. If you think you are forgetting an ingredient, just imagine the Italian flag: green is for basil, white is for mozzarella and red is for tomato sauce.
If you want more umami in your margherita, you can easily add another kind of cheese, like creative Nicole Concepcion, who prefers hers with stracciatella. The curd-like cheese, essentially the center of a burrata adds a mild tang that compliments mozzarella’s slight saltiness.
Nicole also has some tricks up her sleeves to make your pizza-making experience a whole lot easier. Instead of making dough from scratch, use store bought to save time. And while, traditionally a brick oven will yield an even char on your pie, it wouldn’t hurt to use modern day compact alternatives like an Ooni oven. It heats up to a maximum of 500 degrees Celsius making pizza cooking a breeze—you can literally pull it out in a minute! Do check out the comments to find out where Nicole got her oven locally.
Margherita pizza recipe
Ingredients
Pizza dough
Tomato sauce
Mozzarella
Stracciatella
Basil
Flour for dusting
Preparation
- Dust the surface where you will be kneading your dough with flour. This makes it easier to shape it into your desired thinness without sticking
- Place the stretched dough onto a floured pizza peel or pan
- Spread tomato sauce thinly on the dough then top it with mozzarella and stracciatella bits. Finish off with fresh basil leaves
- Pop the pizza in the back of a preheated oven. If you’re cooking on high, rotate the pizza every 20 seconds to ensure an even char on all sides
- After 60 seconds, check for leopard spots or brown spots indicating your dough is cooked through. You can also check if the cheese has melted
- Take it out and let it sit for a few seconds before eating. Enjoy!
Nolisoli Comfort Kitchen comes out Monday and Thursday nights on our IGTV
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Writer: CHRISTIAN SAN JOSE
