Best Homemade Pizza 🍕 by Tasty

Yet another food post? 

Well, yeah... 

My fellow A-Z blogger Mikaela requested it, so here goes.

I discovered this channel called RachhLovesLife, and she's into testing other food videos she finds on TikTok or Tasty. One particular episode is about the best homemade pizza you'll ever eat, so that definitely sparked my interest!

So far I haven't been too thrilled about my own homemade pizza making skills, but I am certainly eager to learn and improve. After some research (mainly watching more videos and also reaching out to people who own a pizza stone) I ordered one and was ready to tackle that lengthy process of making my own pizza dough, proofing and shaping it, etc. etc.

This is the original recipe. It worked well for me, except taste-wise I would probably use 2 full teaspoons of salt instead of 1.5. 

After about four hours of proofing the dough in the bowl, I formed these dough balls. They were looking and feeling promising!

I let them rest for another hour until I was ready to stretch and cover them with the most basic toppings: tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella, chopped black olives, fresh basil. 

Seasonings: freshly ground black pepper and dried Italian herbs.

It looked promising, and I couldn't wait to finally bake and taste this pizza!

I had a couple concerns:

1. Temperature: My oven won't go higher than 230°C (450°F), and it's supposed to be baked at 260°C (500°F) or higher. For this reason people like to use their outdoor BBQ, but I am not a skilled grill chef, so I'd rather stick to my oven. I preheated it for almost an hour to make sure the stone had enough time to get piping hot.
2. "Peeling" (transferring) the pizza onto the pizza stone without making a giant mess. The shovel that was part of the delivered product looked too small, so (against the advice, because plastic) I used a chopping board.
3. Getting the pizza out of the hot oven.

Well, my first attempt was not 100% mess free. The back part of the dough got bent, so the dough was thicker there, and tomato sauce and cheese leaked onto the stone. After the very first use it has now a burnt in area. Yeah, well.

We haven't been able to go out for dinner in over two months, so even if I had to replace the pizza stone, it wouldn't kill me money-wise.

Back to the pizza, though. 

It smelled fantastic, and the cheese was getting dark, so I took it out after about seven minutes. Taking it out is certainly easier than putting it in. It wasn't fully cooked through and still a bit dough-y in the middle. 

The second one was baked for about nine minutes. The bottom was still a bit pale, but more or less cooked through, so that was better. 

I was very happy about the taste and the consistency. I like "American Style Pizza" with thick, fluffy dough, but if you prefer super thin Italian style, you need to do a better job stretching your dough. You know, throw it in the air, spin it, catch it with your knuckles..!

But hey, I was super happy about my first attempt, the kitchen smelled like a pizzeria, I had some Prosecco, and my husband now calls me Pizzaiola, which is the female form of Pizzaiolo. 

Italian for beginners, here you go!

I had two dough balls left that I put into the fridge overnight. Half an hour before lunch I took them out to come back to room temperature, and I noticed they got a bit dry. I might coat it with some olive oil next time, but it was still very good. 

All in all I have to say it was worth the hard work and the waiting, and I will definitely do it again. I'd better - now that I am the proud owner of a fireclay pizza stone!

So this was my 24 hour pizza journey, I hope you liked tagging along, and, more importantly, you'll give this a try yourself and let me know how it turned out!