How to make a good pizza at home without a specialized oven | Cooking aid

Can you make good pizza at home without a pizza oven?Joe, Preston, LancashireYes, but it's more about pizza style which you are going to choose to have the most success with. "The most important thing is oven temperature," says Rich Baker, co-owner of Flat Earth Pizzas in east London, "because home ovens just aren't hot enough to achieve what a pizzeria does" . Joe might, he suggests, fare better with grandma's pizza, which is baked in an oiled baking sheet for about 15 minutes - "It's ideal for the oven," he says. But if you fancy a soft or crispy New York-style Neapolitan slice, build it up in a hot cast iron skillet, then, once it has some color on the base, place it under a high broiler until bubbling. "It's the method I use if I don't have access to a pizza oven," says Nick Buckland, co-owner of Yard Sale Pizza in London, which opens its tenth location in Tottenham next month.

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You'll also need a good basic dough recipe, which thankfully only requires a handful of ingredients - flour, water, yeast, salt - though, adds Baker , you can also include sugar, honey or olive oil "to help it brown better". As for the flour, Joshua Ward, co-founder of Palm's Pizzeria in Margate, uses 00 for his New York-style slices: "You want a fairly high protein content because it helps build the structure of the dough. , which means it won't tear when you take care of it"; you can also use strong white flour, a mixture of the two, or even add a little rye. Buckland also goes for 00 with "at least 13g of protein" and, for three 12-inch pizzas, mixes 500g with 270ml of water and 1g of fresh yeast (or ½g of dry, active yeast in a little warm water). He then adds an additional 30ml of water, followed by 15g of salt and 15g of extra virgin olive oil, and mixes for about 10 minutes, until it forms a smooth, elastic dough. "Fold into a ball, put in a lightly greased bowl, cover and let stand overnight" at around 18°C: "This is the perfect place to let the yeast do its job, but without it happening too quickly." »

Once it has doubled in size, Buckland divides the dough into three pieces of about 260g, shapes them into tight balls, places them on a tray and leaves a few hours to double in volume again. And that's the problem: good dough takes time: "The longer you let it mature, the better the results," he says. (If you're going for grandma's pizza, he adjusts the dough slightly: "The basic recipe is about 60% hydration [the water-to-flour ratio], but for a tray pizza, you want increase that to 80-90%. This way the pizza will stay moist and you'll get those all-important bubbles".)

Let's get to stretching, which Buckland does on a flat, cold surface sprinkled with semolina (for more texture). "Press down in the middle of the ball of dough with your fingertips and work to the edge, leaving a 2 cm border." If you feel confident, take it and "gently open it up on the backs of your knuckles - let gravity do the heavy lifting".

The toppings are deeply personal, but the sauce, says Buckland, requires canned tomatoes with "high tomato content and less juice", plus basil and salt, while Baker could get creative with a butternut squash or a number of caramelized onions. "Work into the sauce from the middle with the back of a ladle in a circular motion," leaving "two fingers width" of uncoated batter all around, says Ward.

You can, of course, ditch the red sauce altogether; Nancy Silverton, in her Mozza cookbook, spreads heavy whipped cream (yes, really) on the base, then adds cooked fennel sausage, red and spring onions, and mozzarella. You can also top your pizza after baking: "Charcuterie works well, as does hot honey or crispy onions," says Tommy Tullis, co-founder of Nole in Salisbury. And here, less really is more: "Don't take the fun out of it," Tullis adds, "but pizza works best when it uses fewer but higher quality ingredients."

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