Vegetable Pizza

I am making pizza again! Yup! This is my 2nd attempt of making pizza just after last week's failed thick pizza crust. I am hoping to succeed in making a thinner crust pizza. Besides the crust, I also would like to incorporate some vegetables as toppings so it is much more healthy.

This week, I am going to follow the ingredients from a recipe book called "The Easy Way to Artisan Breads & Pastries" which I borrowed from the library 2 weeks ago to make the dough. For those who does not own a bread maker, this is a good book as it teaches you how to use a stand electric mixer to knead the dough instead of kneading it on your own. It contains various colourful illustrations and the steps are so well described, you will not have difficulties understanding them. I am using a bread maker to make the pizza dough.

For the pizza recipe in this book, it also offers a no-cook pizza tomato sauce to go with the pizza dough, though I just used the pizza sauce I bought a week ago from the hypermarket. I guess I will try out the pizza sauce from this recipe book the next time I make pizza again, may be next week :)

As usual, I am reducing the quantity that the original recipe by halve to suit for 2 persons.

Ingredients:

(yields 1 30cm pizza)

1/4 cup cold milk

1/4 cup water

1/2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil (I used pure olive oil)

1 1/2 cup bread flour

1 tbs sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dry yeast

Extra olive oil (greasing the baking pan & for the crust before baking)

Toppings:

70 g Pizza sauce (I used Ardmona Pizza sauce)

1/2 Capsicum (Sliced thinly)

4 buttons Shiitake mushroom (Sliced thinly, stalk removed)

1/2 head onion (Sliced thinly)

Grated Mozzarella Cheese (I used Perfect Italiano Pizza Plus)

Method:

1. Pour in the ingredients except salt into the standing electric mixer bowl with the dough hook attached. Mix under low speed for 5 minutes. Add salt and switch to medium speed for additional 10 minutes. Let rise in a floured bowl and covered with cling wrap/ wet cloth for 1 hour.

OR

Dump in the ingredients according to the list above into the bread maker, select the 'Dough' function and wait until the kneading & rising cycle completes.

2. Once complete rising, transfer the dough onto a floured flat surface and give a light kneading to remove the gas from the dough. Let it rise, uncovered for 10 minutes.

3. Preheat oven at 200 degree Celsius.

4. Press the dough into greased, 30 cm pizza pan. I had my baking tray lined with aluminium foil. Try to stretch the dough outwards. Alternatively, you could use a floured rolling pin and roll the dough into 1/8 inch-thick pizza dough.

5. Brush the crust with olive oil.

6. Immediately, spoon pizza sauce over dough, top with cheese and toppings.

7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and crust is golden brown.

Ingredients and partial recipe is adapted from "The Easy Way to Artisan Breads & Pastries"

Outcome:

It is very successful this time! Everything tasted perfectly and I even get a remark that it is almost similar to Pizza Hut's standard! Though, I still failed at achieving the thin crust standard like Spizza or Sarpinos Pizza, we are more than satisfied with the outcome this time around. When we munched the side of the pizza, to our delight, it is crunchy and crispy! Very, very delicious! I would definitely make pizza using this dough recipe again and again until I found a better one!