Homemade Pizza
Lagos, Nigeria · View all recipes
Overview
Pizza dough shaped, topped with sauce, cheese and whatever else you want, and baked hot. No country is claimed here, though pizza is Neapolitan in origin. **This page had no recipe card in the source**, only an article. The ingredients and method below are reconstructed from what that article describes, and that is flagged. The one genuinely useful technique in it is the parchment paper. Shaping the dough directly on a sheet of parchment solves the hardest part of home pizza-making: getting a topped, floppy raw pizza off a peel and into a hot oven without it folding in on itself. The dough sticks to the parchment, the parchment slides, and the pizza releases from it partway through the bake so you can pull the paper out. Beyond that, home pizza comes down to heat. Domestic ovens run far cooler than the wood-fired ovens pizza was developed for, so the standard advice is to run the oven as hot as it will go with a stone or steel preheated inside it for at least half an hour. Africa has its own substantial flatbread-and-topping traditions, Moroccan mhajeb, Tunisian fricassé, South African bunny chow in a different register, and several are on this site.
Ingredients
Directions
- 1
Set the oven as hot as it will go, with a pizza stone or steel inside it, and let it heat for at least 30 minutes. Domestic ovens run far cooler than the wood-fired ovens pizza was developed for, so this matters.
- 2
Roll or stretch the dough out on a sheet of parchment paper. The dough sticks to the parchment, which makes it far easier to handle and to transfer into the oven.
- 3
Spread the sauce over the dough, leaving a border at the edge.
- 4
Scatter over the toppings, then the cheese. Do not overload it, a heavy pizza will not cook through in the middle.
- 5
Slide the parchment and pizza together onto the hot stone or a baking sheet.
- 6
Bake until the crust is browned and the cheese is bubbling, around 10 to 15 minutes depending on how hot your oven runs.
- 7
The pizza releases from the parchment partway through the bake, so pull the paper out at that point and let the base finish directly on the stone.
- 8
Let it stand a minute before cutting.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Chima Achodor- Shape the dough on parchment. It solves the single hardest part of home pizza, getting a topped raw pizza into the oven without it collapsing.
- Preheat a stone or steel for at least half an hour. A hot surface under the base is what gives you a crisp crust rather than a soft one.
- Do not overload the toppings. A heavy pizza steams rather than bakes and the middle stays wet.
- Cook wet toppings first. Raw mushrooms and onions release water onto the dough; sautéed ones do not.
- Run the oven at its maximum. This is one of the few things where domestic equipment is the limiting factor rather than technique.
- Pull the parchment out once the pizza releases, so the base finishes directly on the hot surface.
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