Pizza has long been an international dish. It is loved and prepared everywhere and people have completely forgotten that it owes its birth to sunny Italy. Italian pizza is a favorite product of gourmets all over the world, so our article will focus on it.
What types of pizza are there in Italy?
Unlike our housewives, who prefer to cook this dish with meat and aromatic sausages, Italian cooks put seafood and mushrooms on pizza, generously sprinkling the dough with nuts and various herbs. Often berries and fruits, such as grapes, also end up there. And, of course, you will never find mayonnaise or ketchup in classic pizza from Italy.
Delicious topping for Italian pizza
What toppings do they use on pizza in Italy?
1. Carbonara is a popular pizza based on smoked brisket, Parmesan and tender mozzarella.
2. Marinara – made from mozzarella, tomatoes, oregano and basil.
3. Salmone - very tasty, original pizza with salmon, fillet of other red fish, lemon zest, moscarpone, arugula.
4. Fungi - pizza for mushroom lovers, for the preparation of which oyster mushrooms, champignons, chanterelles, and porcini are used. Parmesan and mozzarella are also used in the recipe.
5. Four cheeses - original recipe with assorted cheeses: blue mold, white mold, hard Parmesan, mozzarella.
6. Neapolitan - prepared from the following ingredients: onions, thyme, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, salt, anchovy fillets, Swiss cheese, olives.
Features of real Italian pizza
Italy has adopted a special law on the rules for preparing pizza:
- the shape should be round – up to 35 cm in diameter;
- the cake should be thin; when cooking, it should be tossed and rotated by hand;
- spices - only parsley, basil, oregano and garlic;
- special varieties of tomatoes and flour, mozzarella from the southern regions of the country are suitable for the filling;
- Only olive oil is used to make pizza.
And now the recipes themselves!
Recipe 1. Italian pizza cooked on regular bread
This recipe will be useful for people who do not have time to prepare complex dishes. But being completely busy is not a reason to deny yourself your favorite treat. So, for preparation we will need:
- a little cheese called mozzarella (150 g),
- about twelve green olives,
- a couple of mint leaves,
- 7 medium sized tomatoes
- 1 clove of garlic,
- about one tablespoon of capers,
- 4 spoons of tomato paste,
- olive oil.
Before you start cooking, preheat the oven to 240 degrees. Take slices of wheat bread and fry them in a toaster or in a frying pan, grate with ground garlic and brush with tomato paste. Then, on each slice of bread, place several slices of tomatoes, a basil leaf, a small piece of cheese, capers and olives. Sprinkle all this with a few drops of olive oil and place in the oven for 10 minutes. The pizza is prepared quickly. You just need to wait until the cheese melts. The dish is served on the table with green salad leaves and fresh vegetables.
Classic dough recipe
The most important thing in preparing the right pizza is the right recipe, and a special technology that will prepare the perfect pizza dough. The classic recipe can be used as a basis for preparing various types of dishes. For the test you will need:
- boiled water at 40°C – 0.3 l;
- dry or live yeast - 10 g or 0.5 packs;
- granulated sugar – 20 g;
- salt – 1 teaspoon;
- durum flour – 1 cup;
- soft flour - 1 cup;
- vegetable oil – 30 ml.
First of all, the dough is prepared. Pour warm water into a deep bowl, add sugar, yeast and add one tablespoon of both types of flour. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and leave to rise in a warm place.
After a quarter of an hour in the bowl, the yeast will dissolve and foam will form on the surface. In another bowl, mix flour, salt, butter and suitable dough. The dough is kneaded. One of the important factors affecting its quality is the correct consistency. The result should be a soft and at the same time elastic pizza dough. The classic Italian recipe involves a thin base, which is easier to roll out from pliable dough.
Recipe 2. Italian pizza with dough
We talked about the so-called “quickie” option, and now we’ll discuss classic Italian pizza with dough. Depending on your wishes, pizza is made from either thin or fluffy dough. It is prepared with the addition of flour, water, salt, yeast and olive oil. If you want to get a thin dough, then you will need very little yeast, only 1 spoon of vegetable oil and half as much flour as for fluffy pizza.
Standard proportions:
Ingredients:
- three glasses of flour;
- 200 grams of lukewarm water;
- one packet of dry yeast;
- A couple of tablespoons of olive oil;
- 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon salt.
The preparation is as follows. The yeast combines with water and sugar, some time passes and it comes to life. After this, knead the dough, combining it with the remaining ingredients. The formed dough rests for a while in a warm place, then it is gently kneaded and placed on a baking sheet greased with olive oil. The pizza is topped with toppings and sprinkled with cheese. All this goes into the oven and bakes until fully cooked.
And now that we’ve talked about the dough, it’s time to talk about pizza topping options.
Yeast-free dough recipe
There are many base recipes for this dish that do not include yeast as ingredients. The flour mixture cooks much faster and turns out no worse than yeast.
Components:
- flour – 2 cups;
- olive oil – 1 tsp;
- milk – 140 ml;
- egg – 2 pcs.;
- salt – 0.5 tsp.
Preparation: 35 minutes.
Calorie content: 63 Kcal/100 g.
Drive the cooled eggs into the container and beat with a fork or whisk for about five minutes. Add butter and slightly warmed milk. It’s better to use homemade one, it’s richer and the dough will knead better.
When the liquid becomes homogeneous, add sifted flour in small batches. Place the lump of flour on a flat, dry surface and begin kneading the dough with your hands. You don’t need to use kitchen appliances for this; you should feel its consistency yourself. This process will take ten to twelve minutes.
Transfer the finished base into a deep bowl, cover it with cling film and leave to rest for fifteen minutes. Then roll it out on a floured surface, lay out the filling and bake in a preheated electric oven.
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Seafood pizza recipe - Italian pastry, with the taste of the sea. Take note of the recipe.
Recipe 3. Italian pizza “Margherita”
The pizza recipe is set in a special standard. Brush the dough with tomato sauce made from exclusively San Marzano tomatoes. Place in the oven for 10 minutes, then remove and add young Mozzarella di Bufalo cheese. Drizzle the pizza with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt, and top with a few fresh basil leaves. Place back in the oven for a few minutes until done. Simple, isn’t it, like everything ingenious.
Recipe 4. Italian Pizza Peperoni
Ingredients:
- 250g ready-made thin Italian pizza dough
- 100-150g Mozzarella cheese
- 100g pepperoni sausage
- 80-100g tomato sauce
- 10ml olive oil
- olives (optional)
How to make Italian Pepperoni pizza:
Roll out the dough to a diameter of about 30cm, brush with tomato sauce, sprinkle with grated mozzarella cheese, and top with thinly sliced pepperoni sausage and olive rings. Bake the pizza in an oven heated to 250-300 degrees for no more than 10 minutes, grease the edges of the finished pizza with olive oil and serve it hot, cutting it into 8 pieces. Bon appetit!
Secrets of delicious pizza
- To prepare thin and crispy pizza, place two baking sheets in a heated oven, with pizza on top and empty below.
- The process of kneading dough requires a good mood; you can turn on music, but not loudly, but in the background.
- The flour must be sifted so that the dough becomes homogeneous.
- Fresh yeast is always better than dry yeast. But if they are missing, you can replace them.
- When kneading the dough, add only half the flour at first, and mix in the rest gradually.
- It is advisable to replace vegetable sunflower oil with olive oil. It has less aroma and will be invisible when baking.
- The process of kneading the dough must be continued until it stops sticking to your hands. It must be remembered that the pizza should not tear at the stage of kneading and forming the base. The dough needs to be soft and elastic.
How to make Italian pizza
How to make classic Four Seasons pizza? Cut the champignons in half lengthwise, then cut the halves into thin slices, cut off the base of the artichokes, leaving only the slices. Thinly cut the salami, the pepper into half rings, the cherry tomatoes into halves, if the mozzarella cheese balls are small, also cut them in half, the egg in half, cut the halves into plates, grate the Parmesan cheese on a fine grater. Roll out the dough for thin pizza into a 30cm flat cake no more than 1cm thick, place it on a pan greased with olive oil, make marks with a knife, lightly cutting the dough into 4 equal sectors (do not cut through the dough all the way). Grease the pizza with tomato sauce, moving 1-2 cm from the edges, place mushrooms and egg in the upper right sector, then, moving clockwise, artichokes and olives, the third sector - salami and sweet peppers, the last - cherry tomatoes and mozzarella. Sprinkle the pizza with grated cheese and bake in an oven preheated to 220 degrees for 20 minutes. Bon appetit!
Pizza thin
How to prepare classic Italian pizza dough is already known, and the preparation of the sauce is usually standard. Now about the filling. The thin pizza recipe uses several types of toppings, which gives it a unique taste.
You will need:
- tomato sauce – 100 g;
- ham – 70 g;
- cheese – 30 g;
- tomatoes – 2 pieces;
- olives – 30 g;
- olives 30 g;
- mushrooms (champignons) – 50 g;
- vegetable oil (for greasing the baking sheet) – 1 tablespoon.
The entire filling is laid out in random order onto the prepared piece, greased with sauce or tomato paste. Before laying out, the ham and vegetables are cut into cubes. Finally, cheese is grated on top. Bake in the oven at about 220 degrees Celsius for eight minutes.
Recipe 6. Italian pizza with sage
To prepare it we will need:
- about 450 grams of dough and several types of cheese;
- 100 g Dor Blue and 100 g Gouda;
- a couple of sage leaves;
- 1-2 cloves of garlic;
- a little flour and black pepper.
Heat the oven to a temperature of 220 degrees, cut the Dor Blue cheese into small cubes and grind the Gouda using a coarse grater. Garlic can be passed through a garlic press. Then we take the dough and put it in a baking dish, sprinkle it with flour, and roll it out over the entire area. In order for it to bake well, pierce it in several places with a fork. Place cheese, garlic and sage leaves on top of the dough. Pepper, salt and bake on the lower level of the oven for about 15 minutes. Then take it out and let it simmer at medium level for about 3 minutes.
Recipe 7. Italian fish pizza with salmon
To prepare we will need:
- approximately 100 grams of canned salmon,
- 100 grams of mushrooms,
- a little tomato
- 50 grams of mozzarella cheese,
- one tomato,
- a little chopped dill,
- 1 zucchini squash
- black pepper,
- salt to taste,
- olive oil for frying.
Roll out the dough into a circle, place it in a baking dish, and generously grease it with tomato. Place grated zucchini and thinly sliced tomato on top. Canned salmon should be opened, excess liquid drained, the fish separated from the bones and mashed thoroughly. Place a layer of salmon on the pizza, top with thinly sliced mushrooms, dill and cheese. Salt, pepper and place in the oven, preheated to 200 degrees for 20 minutes until fully cooked.
Pizza "4 cheese"
The classic pizza called “4 cheese” is especially popular with us. It is distinguished by the delicate taste and aroma of four different cheeses.
To prepare you will need:
- cheeses “Mozzarella”, “Parmesan”, “Dor Blue”, “Emmental” - 100 g each;
- Italian herbs (spices) - to taste;
- tomato - 1 piece;
- vegetable oil.
The classic Italian pizza recipe calls for four recommended types of cheese, but you may not have some of them on hand, and that's no problem. Cheeses can be replaced with analogues.
So, we grate each type of cheese, and you can crumble the soft cheese with your hands. The cheeses are laid out in layers on the finished base, spices are sprinkled, and a tomato cut into slices is laid out on top. Bake for up to fifteen minutes in the oven at 200 degrees.
