A few months ago Andrew completed work on our Outdoor Pizza Oven. It’s been a work in progress for quite a while now as it’s been hard finding the time to finish it. But he did it and it’s brilliant.

We often use it to make easy flatbreads (I tend to use the River Cottage recipe for this as it’s so easy)

We have also been experimenting with different types of pizza dough to get the perfect crisp yet tasty finish and this is the one that we think is perfect. You can’t rush this dough as it needs time to rest so plan ahead. It always freezes really well and we often pull a ball of two out to defrost in the morning ready for fresh pizza that evening. The pizza is incredible of course but my favourite way to use this dough is to make garlic flatbreads. Once you have tried this then supermarket versions will never be the same for you.

This is great in Outdoor Pizza Ovens but also gives great results in a conventional oven.

Perfect Pizza Dough

You will need:

500g of 00 Flour
300ml of cold water
1g of Fresh Yeast – most supermarkets will give you fresh yeast for free. Ask in the bakers section where they slice your fresh bread for you.
15g of salt

Add your yeast to the water and let it sit for a minute or so. Place your flour into a large bowl and add your yeasty water into a dip in the centre. Use your hands to bring some of the flour into the water until the water is thickening and add your salt before bringing in the remaining flour. Continue to mix with your hands to form a dough. Knead for about 10 mins.
Cover and leave for 15 minutes. Now knead again quickly for about 30 seconds.

Divide the dough into four balls, place in a deep dish, sprinkle with flour and cover with cling film. The dough will double in size so leave plenty of room between your balls. Leave to rest overnight.

Now the dough is ready to use.

Place on a really well floured surface. Use your fingers to press the ball out, start in the middle and push out to the edge leaving a ridge around the outside. Turn over and repeat the process. Now stretch the dough out as much as you can without it breaking. Your base should now be about 10 inches in diameter.

You are now ready to top. For pizza we like covering with Cirio double concentrate to tomato purée for convenience then sprinkling with herbs and a few toppings finished with cheese and a tiny drizzle of olive oil.

For the garlic bread we combine butter with garlic purée and some diced fresh herbs and spread over the base. If using a pizza oven this will take just a few minutes. Keep a close eye on it. In a conventional oven at about 200C it will take about 8-10 mins.

This makes the best pizza. Seriously give it a go. We never buy store bought pizza anymore. Once you make a batch of dough and freeze it then this couldn’t be simple to just sprinkle with toppings and bung in the oven.