Cheese and Pears

Thin Pizza Crust (pasta per pizza sottile)

Posted on Feb 14, 2009 09:45:16 AM

This pizza crust definitely is my best so far. For this thin crust pizza dough I used Linda Collister’s recipe for pitta bread in Bread: From Sourdough to Rye: From Ciabatta to Rye (reading from Europe? click here).

For a pizza crust recipe for 3-4 people you’ll need:

• 500g (4 ½ cups) strong white flour preferably sifted
• about 300 ml (10 fl 0z) of lukewarm water, preferably filtered
• 15g ( 1 tbsp) of fresh yeast or a 7g (½ tbsp) sachet of dry instant yeast
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

For the topping, typically the minimum requirements are:

• one tin of chopped tomatoes
• one ball of fresh mozzarella cheese and/or any kind of cheese that melts (like the Camembert in the picture)

In a bowl pour 2/3  of the water and the yeast. Stir until it starts bubbling, then add the olive oil and keep stirring.

Add a handful of flour, and start mixing it with your hand, when it’s smooth add another one, and so on. After the second or third handful you can add the salt.

Work the dough with your hand in the bowl until you have collected all the flour, start using both hands when it gets too hard to work it with just one.

Transfer the dough to the working surface and knead it for 5-10 minutes. The final result should be an elastic, slightly moist dough, that sticks for a second to the working surface, but comes off easily. If you think it’s too dry add some water, just few drops at the time.

Dust the bottom of the bowl with flour and put the dough in it. Cover it with cling film and let it rise until it has doubled in size (it should take about two hours).

When it’s ready, start preheating the oven at 220° leaving the baking tray in.

Push the dough gently with your knuckles to let the air come out, dust the working surface with flour.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin until it’s very thin (about ½ cm).

Tear off a piece of oven paper that fits the baking tray and lay the dough gently on it.

Cover the  pizza dough with the tomato sauce, add a sprinkle of salt.

When the oven is ready, take out the baking tray (remember: it’s hot!) and transfer the thin crust pizza dough, using the four corners of the oven paper (you will probably need an extra pair of hands here), then put it in the oven.

After 15 minutes you can add the mozzarella cheese and the ham, then let it bake for about 20 more minutes, until the mozzarella is melted, and slightly brown. If you are used to a thicker homemade pizza crust, remember that a thin crust pizza needs less cooking.

One note on water. The bread and pizzas recipes usually give a fixed quantity of water and then say that you should add more if the dough is too dry, or add flour if it’s too wet. I don’t think that the latter makes much sense.  Adding flour changes the balance with the other dry ingredients (yeast and salt in this case), so I think it’s wiser to use just part of the water and then add the necessary to make the dough moist enough.

If you likes this classic of Italian food, try the rest of pizza recipes.

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