Making Pizza Dough For The First Time

Part of the purpose for the Lone Male In The Kitchen Blog is to force myself to try new things food wise and I've never ever made my own bread. Even in cookery class at school we never made it so for someone who loves baking cakes it made sense to try and make my own bread.

As I had a friend coming round for some dinner I decided to combine my first attempts at bread making with making pizza dough for the first time. As you can see below I was definitely pleased with my results as I love Italian food and pizza is one of my simple favourites.

My first ever pizza with homemade pizza dough 

Ingredients I used to make my pizza dough

(Makes 4 25cm pizzas)

Simple pizza dough ingredients

Just 4 simple ingredients for making pizza bases. The recipe is loosely based on a James Martin recipe as I needed some inspiration for my first attempt.

• 275g Strong white flour and extra for dusting
• 2 teaspoons (or one 7g sachet) of fast action or easy blend yeast
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 225ml of warm water (Hand hot)
• 4 teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Instructions for making my simple pizza dough

1. I sifted the flour, yeast and salt into my large metal mixing bowl. I don't actually have a sieve at how so I passed the ingredients through a small grater, grinding the grater while tipping a container against it to work in a similar action to a regular sieve. A sieve is definitely now on my list of pay-day purchases.
2. I then made a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and bit-by-bit added in the warm water and olive oil while stirring together the mixture to make a soft dough.

My pizza dough forming as I mix the flour, water, yeast, salt and olive oil together

3. I then tipped the dough out onto a floured surface and roll into a ball ready for kneading. Having never kneaded bread dough before I wasn't quite sure how to knead but got into the habit of pushing the dough down and out with my right hand, then cupping and turning the dough mixture with my left hand to go again. I did this for around 5 minutes but it seemed like an eternity.

Pushing out the pizza dough as part of the kneading process

Cupping and rolling the pizza dough ready to go again

4. I then returned the pizza dough to my metal bowl before covering with clingfilm and leaving the dough to gain size for about an hour.
5. After the hour was done I took the risen dough out of the metal bowl and briefly kneaded it again for about 20 seconds. Then with a sharp knife I cut my dough into four and placed three of the pieces of dough back into the bowl and re-covered.
6. Using a beer bottle I then rolled my dough out into a disc. I couldn't find my rolling pin so was forced to use a bottle of Erdinger Dunkel dark Bavarian beer.

Erdinger Dunkel bottles make great rolling pins for pizza bases

7. I then transferred the pizza base to a baking sheet before topping ready for a hot oven.

My first ever homemade pizza- including my own dough too. Delicious

A quick and easy pizza chilli topping

Blend together 100ml of passata, one chili (De-seeded if you prefer) and a couple of cloves of garlic. Smear over your pizza base leaving a couple of centimetres of dough visible at the end. Chop up a round of cheap and cheerful mozzarella and then bake in a hot oven until the dough starts to bronze.

Turkish Pide Pizza, Istanbul Restaurant Leicester

A recent trip out to a friends barbecue was a great night although with a big appetite like mine there was always going to be the possibility that I'd be left feeling hungry at the end of the evening. A great night was had by all but why does drinking always give you an extreme late night hunger?

We were partying around Leicester's West End around the end of Narborough road in probably one of the UK's most multicultural areas and after stumbling out of the awesome Fubar we headed a short walk down the street looking for somewhere to grab a snack.

Stumbling past Leicester's Istanbul Restaurant on Narborough Road we saw a great looking fridge full of fresh food and some great looking skewers of meat and as there were plenty of people also eating in there, we decided to take the plunge.

I have to admit that we were the only people likely to be of non-Turkish decent within the restaurant. Yet the fact there were plenty of people sat down eating was a good sign of great food. And what we encountered was very, very good.

Turkish Pide Pizza with Garlic Sausage at Istanbul Restaurant, Leicester

We plumped for a Turkish Pide Pizza between us. I tried them previously on a trip to Kas, a small fishing village that has developed into a Turkish Mecca for adventure tourism whilst still maintaining a village feeling that I'd like to think resembles the real Turkey and not that of the sprawling hotels of Marmaris and Bodrum with the hassling sellers almost forcing you into their shops and thus putting people off a return to Turkey.

Pide is the traditional flat bread. It's almost like a plain naan bread but it tastes much more moist. Teamed with some great mozarella cheese and garlic sausage it made for a great snack. And at only £6 for the meal I'd say it's a bargain compared to what you would pay in most restaurants.

My only regret is that I didn't have a traditional sage tea to wash it down. Maybe next time