Thanks to Ollie Hunter for this recipe that he demonstrated at the HFF Teen Pizza Cook-Off 2019 in his kitchen at The Wheatsheaf in Chilton Foliat.
Pizza Dough
240gm Doves Organic flour – use Strong White (or Pasta Flour for extra silky dough)
2 level tspn of rock salt (or 1 tspn of cooking salt)
1 tspn sugar
1 tbspn oil (olive or rapeseed)
130ml warm water
1 tspn dried yeast
Tomato Sauce
Buy good quality tinned tomatoes. Blitz with a little salt and sugar. No need to pre-cook.
Method
There are 2 methods of mixing the ingredients:
Mix the flour, salt, sugar, oil and yeast. Then add the warm water.
or
Mix the flour, salt, sugar and oil. Stir the yeast into the warm water. Leave for 2 minutes then add to the rest.
Knead the dough for a good 10 minutes, not bashing but stretching the dough as much as possible. Then put in an oiled bowl to rise for about an hour.
You can cover the top of the dough in a little oil too to stop it forming a crust.
Turn your oven on as high as it will go.
When the dough has doubled in size, cut it in half. Roll each half into a rough circle shape, as thin as you can get, using semolina to stop the dough sticking to your surface.
Spread tomato sauce over the dough, leaving an inch of bare crust. Sprinkle with toppings of your choice (eg cheese, capers, chorizo) – but not too many. Sprinkle oil over everything.
Carefully transfer onto a pre-heated baking tray (you can turn it upside down if you want a flat surface without a lip) or pizza stone. If your pizza is big and floppy and doesn’t slide off your surface, cut it in half so you have two smaller more manageable pizzas and you can even have two people holding two corners each.
Cook for 5 – 7 minutes until crust has browned.
If the crust has browned but the base is soft underneath, take the pizza out of the baking tray and put it directly on an oven shelf or a grill and put back in the oven for a couple of minutes.
Sprinkle with fresh basil or rocket leaves.
