Pizza Capricciosa

Lets begin with something that is very easy to make and everybody loves it - pizza! Pizza is the most famous food from Italy. There is a story that pizza was food for poor people. It was just flat brad that was sold on the markets and streets by peasants until the Italian queen Margherita spot it on one of her travels around Italy. The Queen tasted and loved the bread and would eat it every time she was out amongst the people. One day Chef Rafaelle Esposito made special pizza to honor the queen.  It had colors of Italian flag on it: green - basil, white - mozzarella cheese, red - tomato. So the first Margherita pizza was born. 

Today I will prepare pizza capricciosa, and this is way I do it:

Ingredients:

White Flour (500g)

Yeast

Tomato Juice

Ketchup

Ham (150g)

Cheese (if you cant find mozzarella, use some easy melting cheese ) (300 g)

Mushrooms (I prefer champiñones) (150g)

Oregano

Olives

The Pizza Dough:

Quality Dough is very important! Some people think that it is difficult to make, but it is not. It only requires practice. Avoid buying pizza dough, make it yourself, it is easy!

Start with pouring small bowl with 300ml of hot water (not warm). Put half of yeast (25g/2) in. Add pinch of sugar and pinch of flour. Let it sit for about 10 minutes to react and grow. Sugar and hot water will help yeast grow faster;)

Sift flour in the bawl or on the clean table, whatever you are comfortable with. Make a hole in the middle and add prepared yeast in the center. Season with salt but around on the flour, not on the yeast. If you put salt directly on yeast, it can stop your dough grow later on. Mix it with a spoon until you mix everything up and then start working with your hands. Knead the dough well to create gluten until you make it homogeneously and not much sticky. While kneading add some flour if needed to get perfect texture of your dough. Once you are done, make ball of it and spread pinch of flour on the top, cover it and live it for about 30 minutes on warmish place to grow. Meanwhile you can prepare and cut everything for the topping, shred cheese, cut mushrooms etc. After 30 minutes re-knead your dough. Take baking pan and cover it tick with an olive oil. Spread your dough in the pan and form it very, very tick and round. Put some cheese on the edges and fold them in. Turn your oven on to pre-heat on 220 degrees celsius.

The Topping

Mix tomato juice with a spoon of ketchup in a cup. Add some salt, pepper and oregano and mix it. Spread it on the dough. Then put on some ham. Next one is cheese, and on top of it mushrooms and olives. Spread with some oregano on top of it and bake it in the pre-heated oven for 12-15 minutes on 220 degrees celsius. 

Serving

I usually cut it in 6 pieces after taking out from the oven and just simply put it on the table while still is in the baking pan. Pizza on the table disappears in few seconds anyway :)