WFT?! (What's For Tea): Wood Fire Oven Pizzas. Easy Dough Recipe

Hello Fellow Nom Seekers!

With the recent good weather, we have been firing up the wood fire oven for a bit pizza making.



 Having literally ploughed through and tried dozens of dough recipes, I have utlimately settled on this particular pizza dough recipe which is a hybrid of several.  It is nice and elastic without being too chewy or sticky.  It rolls out a dream and the texture is crispy yet can withstand the weight of lots of toppings.

This dough recipe makes enough for twelve 30cm pizzas.  I also freeze balls of these ready to defrost and use at a later date.

Ingredients:

• 1.40kg of strong high protein plain flour (I use the Lighthouse brand) plus extra for dusting
• 3 cups of lukewarm water
• 1.5 tablespoon of dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon of raw sugar
• pinch or two of salt
• 3.5 tablespoon of olive oil
• semolina for dusting

Method:

• Place dry yeast and sugar into a bowl with the lukewarm water.  Leave to stand for a 5 - 10 minutes until the yeast is all frothy.  Once frothy, mix the olive oil in.  
• In a large mixing bowl, add the wet yeast mixture with the flour and salt.  Use your hands to amalgamate the ingredients.  Tip out onto a dusted work surface (I use semolina to dust the work surface) to knead into a large ball.  As this is quite a large batch of dough, I split this into 3 batches to knead.  
• Place dough into a clean mixing bowl and cover with a damp tea towel to proof.  I leave mine overnight or for a few hours.  
• After proofing, punch down and knead into balls the size of how you ultimately want your pizzas to be.  You can freeze them at this stage in zip lock bags or use straight away.  

Here's my favourite pizza topping:  baby octopus, prawns, smoked salmon, roast potato. ham with thyme and spring onions.  On a passata base (tinned tomatoes pureed with cloves of garlic and oregano) with a four cheese blend (Romano, cheddar, mozarella and parmesan).  

I love making my own pizzas as it is so much more healthier than from a pizza shop and I can really customise it to my heart's content.  

My fav toppings

My baby going into the fire

For some inspiration on pizza toppings go here.

Until next time,
Nom Seeker, Glutt