Pizza is very easy to prepare, and you can bake it even without great culinary skills. And our tips will help you make it even easier and faster.
Dough tricks
So, if you decide to make pizza, First you need to knead the yeast dough. Before baking, it should stand for 30-60 minutes. The dough must be deflated 2 times and only after that can it be put into the mold. To prevent the dough from sticking to your hands, you need to grease your hands with oil.
You can bake pizza in the oven in 2 ways - on a baking sheet or in a frying pan, and its thickness should be at least 2 mm. The baking sheet must be greased with vegetable oil.
There is no need to roll out the pizza crust - the dough is laid out on a baking sheet and stretched evenly over the entire surface with your fingers so that its edges hang down a little. Before putting the dough in the oven, it needs to stand for at least 5-7 minutes.
If the dough is very wet, place a sheet of parchment on it and roll it straight through the paper.
If you prefer to bake pizza in a frying pan - a classic round shape, generously grease the bottom and edges with vegetable oil, as the dough will rise greatly, and then sprinkle with a little semolina or dust with flour - so that the finished pizza can be freely removed from the pan. Place the dough in a frying pan and place in a warm place for 10-15 minutes, and then in the oven.
Sometimes the dough is placed in the oven without filling and baked until half cooked- when the inside is still raw, and a thin crust has formed on top. At this moment, it is taken out of the oven, the filling is laid out in layers and it is baked until done.
The average baking time for pizza is 30-40 minutes at a temperature of 250°C. Each pizza is special, so there are slight differences in recipes.
So, the dough can be thin or thick. Thin baked in 20-30 minutes. A thicker layer can be left in the oven for almost 1 hour, but reduce the heat slightly, lowering the temperature to 220 degrees C.
Baking time depends on the filling. If its layer is thin or it is loose, it is necessary to reduce the time; denser and more voluminous requires increased baking time.
If different types of filling are used, the raw one should be placed on top (for faster cooking). In this case, it is advisable to sprinkle it with cheese or a layer of some other product so that it is not open, but languishes as if under a lid.
By the way, It’s better to put a small layer of filling on a thin crust, but not too soggy.. The best thing is if it is meat, cheese, fish, squeezed or dried vegetables, and dried fruits.
A thick layer of dough is suitable for a fluffier, multi-layered and moist filling. You can also put the main filling of vegetables and meat on it.
If the pizza browns too quickly during baking, it should be covered with clean paper soaked in water.
Pizza in a frying pan
If you don't have an oven, you can cook the pizza on the stovetop in a skillet. There are frying pans with glass thermal lids; they are most convenient for baking pizza.
The dough is rolled out in a small layer, placed on a heated frying pan, greased with a large amount of vegetable oil, and the filling is immediately placed on it. Cover with a lid and reduce heat to low so that the dough bakes evenly.
Pizza cooks in a frying pan much faster than in the oven: baking time is 15 minutes. A simple dough can be kept on the fire for 10 minutes, since it fries faster than yeast dough. We remind you: its thickness should not be too large.
Its readiness is checked with a match, piercing it in the thickest place. If the match is dry, the pizza is ready. In an open frying pan, the dough is baked in 2 batches, so the baking time increases slightly (the pancake needs to be allowed to cool a little before adding the filling). It takes 20-25 minutes to prepare the pizza.
Since the dough bakes quite quickly, the raw filling simply won’t keep up with it.. All of it must be prepared in advance - fried, stewed or boiled.
You also need to monitor its thickness: so that it does not spread, since the juice or syrup will be absorbed into the dough and it will remain damp and tasteless. In addition, liquid can seep through the dough layer and the pizza will burn. The best filling option in this case is when the bottom layer is made up of meat or fish, dry boiled vegetables, and on top is slightly softer or raw foods. Then they will saturate the lower layers, but nothing will leak to the bottom of the pan.
When baking pizza in a frying pan, you should not put mayonnaise or anything similar on the top layer (to protect the main layers from burning).
A few words about pizza toppings
Mayonnaise for pizza(if you prefer to cook with it) it is better to replace it with sour cream with mashed boiled yolk, adding 1 teaspoon of mustard.
So that boiled or fried meat on pizza does not lose its aroma and taste, there is no need to salt it immediately before cooking or frying, as salt causes the premature release of meat juice. After this, the meat on the pizza may turn out to be too tough and tasteless. It is advisable to boil and fry the pizza meat shortly before baking the pizza itself.
Before placing the fried meat on the dough, sprinkle it with a few tablespoons of cold water and place a few pieces of butter or margarine on top. In this case, it will retain the taste of freshly fried pizza.
Pizza is often made with sausage. For this purpose, it is better to use semi-smoked and boiled varieties of sausages with pieces of lard. Sausage can be replaced with pieces of semi-smoked ham or lard.
Tomatoes for pizza can be cut into thin slices, or you can remove the skin and mash it. To remove the skin easily, place them in boiling water for a few seconds and then immediately in cold water. The peel should be removed from the side opposite the stalk.
Ham for the filling can be replaced with pieces of semi-smoked or boiled sausage.
For pizza, it is best to use soft and semi-hard cheeses(they melt and bake better).
As an original and tasty pizza filling, you can use mixed minced meat consisting of chicken, pork and beef.
Garlic cloves can be cut into thin slices or pressed with a special garlic press. Add garlic to pizza in moderation, since its pungent smell can permeate the entire filling, depriving all other ingredients of the aroma.
It is advisable to prepare pizza from fresh vegetables immediately before serving., in order to preserve as much as possible the nutrients of the filling, which disintegrate when reheated. Therefore, it is better not to reheat pizza with vegetables, but to eat it cold. It should be stored in the refrigerator for no longer than 2 days.
The readiness of the pizza can be determined not only by the type of filling, but also by the bottom crust of the dough: it should easily separate from the baking sheet.
If after baking you cannot remove the pizza from the pan, place the mold on a towel moistened with cold water and cool slightly in this form. After this, the pizza can be easily removed from the mold.
So, your pizza is ready!
A few tips on plating and serving pizza.
- People take the pizza with their hands and bite off small pieces, so there must be napkins on the table.
- Traditional pizza is always served hot, straight from the oven: “piping hot.”
- Dry wine is usually served with pizza.. When choosing it, it is important to follow some rules of etiquette. So, white will ideally complement pizza with fish, ham, chicken and vegetables. Red is best served with meat, beans and mushrooms.
A fairly simple recipe is floating around the Internet, everything seems easy, but not everyone can make pizza in a frying pan the first time, and there are several reasons for this.
Of course, you can order the dish at a pizzeria, or you can cook it yourself.
1. Ingredients or how to make the dough soft
4 tablespoons of sour cream and milk, 2 eggs and 8 tablespoons of flour, 0.5 tsp. salt.
It is usually suggested to use both sour cream and mayonnaise, but replacing one of these ingredients with milk or water will help you achieve a softer pizza.
The combination of rather rich sour cream and mayonnaise ensured that the base would not stick to the pan, but the dough itself, after cooking, hardened more and more every minute.
By reducing the fat content by half, we made the dough much healthier, and before removing the pizza, you need to carefully pry it around the edges and make sure that everything comes off. Usually, there is no need to additionally lubricate the frying pan with vegetable oil.
In addition to these ingredients, it is worth adding a teaspoon of spices to the dough. This can be any set of dried herbs or even a seasoning like mivina; in this case, do not forget to adjust the amount of salt. The dough is quite thick and the flavor is quite noticeable, so even if you use aromatic herbs on top, the bland base will be quite boring.
2. Dough consistency
After combining eggs, sour cream (mayonnaise), milk and spices, mix them well, and then add flour little by little. The dough will turn out to be quite liquid; it should spread itself over the pan in a more or less uniform layer.
There is no need to add baking powder or soda, otherwise the filling will sink into the middle of the crust, and the resulting dish will have little resemblance to pizza.
3. Cooking temperature
Pizza in a frying pan is cooked only with a lid. It is best to pour the dough onto a cold surface, then turn on the lowest heat and immediately cover everything with a lid.
If you’re not at all sure, you can try baking pizza using the same recipe in the oven. It turns out just as tasty, only the cheese on top will not just be melted, but also slightly fried and the filling should be added right away. And, of course, it is worth adjusting the amount of dough depending on the size of the baking sheet.
4. Cooking technology or why pizza can be burnt and raw at the same time
After the dough is covered, there is a little time to prepare the filling. But until the pizza is baked, nothing should be placed on it. When the surface is no longer wet, you can spread it with mayonnaise and ketchup in any order, add your favorite filling, for example, sausage and grate cheese on top.
After this, you need to cover the pizza again and wait until the cheese melts. You need to add very little sauce, otherwise the dough will feel underbaked.
These four secrets will help you get it right the first time or determine why your pan pizza didn't turn out well. This quick snack option will be a great alternative to sandwiches.
How nice it is when a homemade pie or cake flaunts on the table in front of guests!
It’s good if the housewife is friendly with the dough, and her baking is always successful. And if not? After all, failures happen not only to young housewives, but also to more experienced ones, when a freshly baked beautiful and rosy pie turns out to be raw inside.
Individual approach to the test
Just as theater begins with a hanger, so any pie begins with kneading dough.
It’s not for nothing that dough is divided into puff pastry, yeast dough, shortbread, biscuit... This means that the approach to each dough should be different.
Very often you can come across recommendations that state that the baking temperature of any dough should be 180-200°. But in fact, if one dough feels great at this temperature, then the other dough will be irrevocably damaged!
Why doesn't shortbread dough bake?
Shortbread dough is rich in sugar, eggs and fat. In order for the shortbread dough to be crumbly and well baked, it should not be kneaded for a long time.
This dough is baked at 220-240°. It quickly turns golden brown, slightly increasing in volume. And if it is not very thick, it bakes well.
The shortbread dough inside is almost never wet, since there is little liquid in it. But due to improper kneading, it can turn out dense and hard, like a cracker.
To get crumbly and well-baked shortbread dough, it is best to use only yolks, and do not melt the butter, but put it in the dough in a softened or even frozen form.
To ensure that the shortbread dough is well baked, the ingredients for kneading it are used chilled.
Why is biscuit dough not baking?
Biscuit dough is perhaps the most capricious. But you can also find an approach to it. The main thing is to adhere to several rules.
- In order for the biscuit dough to bake well, it must be fluffy. And this can only be achieved thanks to well-beaten eggs. Moreover, most often the whites and yolks need to be beaten separately.
- After kneading, the biscuit dough is immediately placed in the oven until it settles.
- It is very important that the oven is not very hot. After all, if the temperature in it is above 200°, the dough will immediately become covered with a crust, which will block access to hot air, and the dough itself will not be able to rise. Therefore, the mold with biscuit dough is placed in the oven, heated to 200°, and after 5-10 minutes the temperature is reduced to 170-175°. And at this temperature the biscuit is baked for a total of 30-35 minutes.
- During baking, you must not open the oven, otherwise the cake will fall off, and it will be impossible to fix it. As a result, the cake will turn out to be covered with a golden brown or even burnt crust on top, and inside there will be a dense, semi-raw mass.
Why doesn't puff pastry bake?
Puff pastry is rich in fat. The butter is placed into this dough either in one large piece, or chopped with a knife, but under no circumstances melted. Thin, crispy slices of ready-made ruddy dough are obtained thanks to high temperature and a certain kneading. At high temperatures (240-260°), the butter in the puff pastry begins to actively boil and bubble, thereby lifting the layers of dough. They fry quickly without sticking to each other.
But if the puff pastry is placed in a low-heat oven, the butter, having melted, will simply flow out onto the baking sheet, and the layers of dough will stick together. The end result will be a heavy, wet, unbaked crust. Moreover, it is also tasteless.
Why doesn't yeast dough bake?
If you approach the preparation of yeast dough correctly, it is very difficult to spoil it. The main conditions for its preparation:
- You cannot use expired yeast. Since such dough simply will not rise, which means it will not bake.
- You cannot increase the dosage of yeast. Baking made from such dough acquires a sour taste and smell of mash.
- Yeast dough must be kneaded thoroughly. It should not be steep, since products made from tight yeast dough are heavy and unbaked.
- Yeast dough requires good proofing. Yeast dough products must be kept in a warm place to rise before baking. If you don’t do this, but immediately put the pie in the oven, then the baked goods will soon become covered with a thick crust, and the dough will not have time to rise and will not be baked in the middle.
Why doesn't protein dough bake?
Airy cakes for cakes and meringue-type pastries are made from protein dough.
Protein dough is the most tender and fragile. For it to bake, only three conditions are needed:
- The whites must be thoroughly beaten to stable peaks.
- Protein dough should not be baked in a hot oven. Otherwise, products made from it will instantly become covered with a brown crust, remaining raw inside. If you take such products out of the oven, they will immediately fall off, turning into thin, chewy, unbaked pancakes.
- In order for the protein dough to bake well, place it in the oven, heated no higher than 100°, and bake (dry) for about 1.5-2 hours.
Why doesn't the pastry bake?
Butter dough prepared with kefir or sour cream most often gives the housewife a lot of trouble.
When baked, it turns out very beautiful, rosy, with an appetizing crust. But the inside turns out to be raw. What is the housewife doing wrong?
- Before you put the eggs in this dough, you need to beat them well.
- Excess sugar also has a bad effect on the quality of the dough. Very sweet dough does not bake well. Same as too fatty.
- In order for the kefir dough to bake well, soda or baking powder is added to it for fluffiness. But you need to know that the dough cannot be left on soda for a long time without baking. Especially if the dough is liquid. Therefore, as soon as you put the soda in the dough and stir it until bubbles appear, it needs to be sent to the oven.
- The optimal temperature for baking products from kefir or butter dough is 200-210°. But if the dough is kneaded for a jellied pie, then the temperature should be reduced to 180° a few minutes after placing it in the oven. Otherwise, the top of the pie will burn and the middle will remain raw.
- Do not open the oven for the first 20 minutes to prevent the cake from settling. Check readiness with a toothpick. If pieces of dough stick to the toothpick, and the top of the cake is already browned, then you need to cover it with parchment or foil and lower the temperature slightly.
In order for pies made from any dough to bake well, you need:
- Adhere to the temperature regime, both during kneading the dough and during its baking.
- Observe the proportions of ingredients in the dough. Especially flour. Indeed, due to the reduced amount of flour, most often the dough is not baked.
- Beat the eggs well if the recipe calls for it.
- Do not remove the cake before the due date.
- A pie just taken out of the oven cannot be immediately cut into portions. When cutting, the hot dough crumples under the knife and appears unbaked when cut. This is especially true for biscuit dough. The only exceptions are products made from shortcrust pastry, since cooled shortcrust pastry is very difficult to accurately cut.
Making pizza at home is now easier than ever. In supermarkets you can find ready-made pizza bases, which are very easy to prepare with your favorite toppings. You don't need to be a chef to do this, just follow a few simple tips and you'll save money by not having to order this dish home.
El Nariz/shutterstockHere are a few pizza making tips you should know before you get started:
1. Always preheat your oven before baking your pizza. If you start baking in a cold oven, the pizza will be raw, it will need to be baked longer, and it will lose its taste.
2. To bake a double-stuffed pizza with a diameter of 30 cm evenly and completely, preheat the oven to 200ºC.
Milos Batinic/shutterstock 3. Always place the pizza tray in the center of the oven.
4. Don't forget about oven mitts! You don't want to get burned!
5. Place the finished pizza on a flat, horizontal surface so you can cut it as evenly as possible. Place on a wooden board or kitchen towel.
6. To properly determine whether the pizza is done, make sure the cheese is completely melted and golden brown. The edge of the base should be slightly browned, and if you lift the bottom of the pizza a little, the dough should have a uniform brownish color.
7. To ensure the pizza tastes as fresh as possible, use different herbs and spices: a mixture of Italian herbs, garlic powder, sesame seeds, etc.
8. Pre-lubricate the base ready for baking with a small amount of olive oil, then it will absorb its aroma and taste very pleasant.
9. When rolling, do not forget to sprinkle the work surface with flour. Always control the thickness so that the dough is not too thin.
carpe89/shutterstock 10. Roll from the center to the edge so it is evenly distributed.
11 . If the rolled base is larger than the pallet, you can cut off the excess with a knife or simply roll it into a “tube”, but then the edge will be thick. You can also use curly scissors or cutters to trim the edges so that the pizza is grooved.
12. Some vegetables, such as carrots, zucchini, broccoli, require preliminary heat treatment, otherwise the dough will not bake and they will remain raw. Onions, mushrooms, spinach and bell peppers contain a lot of moisture and the dough can turn out sticky. Therefore, lightly fry these products (until half cooked) and drain the excess liquid.
Now you know everything about making pizza and you can start creating your next masterpiece. Keep in mind that you don't need too much of the base tomato sauce so that the dough doesn't end up soggy.
Monika Wisniewska/shutterstock
Making homemade pizza is a great way to use up leftovers. If you have leftover baked chicken, ground beef, a small zucchini, a couple of fresh mushrooms or some sweet peppers, then you can safely (or buy) and make pizza. Just don’t overdo it with spices - too much of them will add extra bitterness to the whole dish.
Enjoy your meal!
