So there's lots of fancy kit and ingredients being used in this thread, but here's something for people starting out. The missus likes her Tesco, who are pretty useless for all things pizza, so this is what I've managed using a "short and shoddy" approach with (almost) all Tesco ingredients :
As an example of Tesco's uselessness, they don't have OO flour, the nearest they have is the
Matthews Super Fine which is 10% protein or the
Homepride Extra Fine which is only 9.4%. Which is probably usable but I imagine only if you treat it "properly" with >24h rests etc. So I stock up with a couple of bags of OO flour from Sainsburys when I pass them - their
TtD OO flour is 13.2% protein - or Waitrose or the farm shop, they're all cheaper than Tesco for baking stuff as Tesco considers it a "luxury".
So my base (for two) is just 300g flour, 200g water, maybe 2/3 tsp salt and two shakes of
Allinson Easy Bake yeast (maybe 7g?), a bit more yeast if I'm short on time. Yes, it's better if you leave it longer, but as long as it's in the bread machine at least 3 hours before I need it, then I get a reasonable pizza. I suspect that you may not get away with that with the Matthews flour from Tesco due to its low protein content. You can leave it overnight in the fridge - and it can double in size there, just as a warning - and you'll get a better dough that handles better, but I'm seldom that organised. The one above was made from Sainsbury's flour and had just under 3 hours from flour to oven.
Hardware-wise, I'm just using a pretty bog-standard oven which probably doesn't even get up to 240°C these days, I just let it preheat on maximum whilst I'm making the pizza. My one "gadget" is a
£1.29 32cm (12.6") silicone pizzamesh from Dunelm (who
have quite a bit of pizza kit) which seems to work pretty well, cleans easily, and has the incidental benefit that unlike metal/stone ones you can cut it to fit two pizzas on one shelf of the oven. (as seen in photo above)
If I remember, I rinse some of the toppings (see below) and leave them to drain in a sieve before starting with the dough.
I dust my hands with regular plain flour (I'm cheap) before handling dough, which starts with dividing the 500g of dough into two - I find 250g doesn't quite cover the mesh, the pizza is about 11-12" diameter, maybe 10" if I've rushed the rise and I screw up the pulling. I know it's heresy among the purists, but it's OK to roll it with a rolling pin (or 500ml beer bottle), you still get pizza. Flat pizza that's had the gas knocked out of it, but you still get pizza. I've tried some of the online methods for turning dough into something pizza-shaped and not really got on with any of them, my method is to start with a ball and start pulling the centre out towards the edge, rotate and repeat. Once you get something that's about 6" diameter, I get gravity to help - hold it vertically by the crimp in two hands and bounce it a bit like a yoyo, rotate a bit and repeat.
Then the absolutely critical bit for those without fancy ovens - prebake the base for 4-5 minutes whilst prepping the toppings. Not only does this ensure it ends up cooked, it allows you to unstick it from the mesh before adding the toppings which makes life much easier later.
Toppings (for one) :
Half a 250g
Galbani Mozzarella Maxi
Half a 95g jar
John West anchovies (the Tesco Cantabrian are much milder which I don't like)
25g?
Tesco capers
30g?
Tesco sliced black olives
1-2 pieces Tesco
sun-dried tomatoes
Half a
Dolmio Stir In Sun Dried Tomato Pasta Sauce 150G
I rinse the olives and capers and leave them to drain in a sieve if I haven't done that before starting with the dough.
I know one ought to cook one's own tomato sauce and Tesco's premade options really aren't that great but I'm lazy. The
Mutti sauce is probably the best pizza-specific option in Tesco but is seldom in stock and the tin is a bit too big for two. I like the sun-driedness that the Dolmio pasta sauce brings, although half a pot is a bit meagre and a full pot is a bit too oily, so I tend to end up stretching half a pot with a bit of whatever tomato-y stuff we have kicking round the fridge - passata etc. I smear it over the pre-cooked base with a spoon.
I pat dry the mozzarella with a kitchen towel and slice once lengthways and then about 6 times along it, then lay the 12 pieces out. Pat the anchovies dry, halve them and put a piece on each bit of cheese - I really like that combination of salty anchovy and mozzarella. There should be a few bits left over, either scatter on the pizza or eat them... Although the John West ones are the least bad option in Tesco, my favourites are the
Sainsburys garlic/herb anchovies which are nicer, cheaper, and good for all sorts of other things, I stock up whenever I pass Sainsburys.
In similar fashion, pat dry the sun-dried tomato and chop it roughly into <1cm pieces. Scatter, along with the drained capers and olives. You can can chop your own olives, a full olive is a bit much but about 1/3 of an olive is the right size. So the pre-sliced ones are a bit small but I'm lazy.
Total ingredient costs work out at about £3.70 per person, although the generous helping of anchovies accounts for almost a third of that, and the mozzarella almost as much. You could make it cheaper by replacing the anchovies with eg pepperoni. Sticking with the Tesco theme, they
do pepperoni in smaller (3.3g, 36 to a pack) and bigger sizes (5g, 26 to a pack) - according to our orders we did get the 36-pack once but not again. I quite like pepperoni on pizzas but have absolutely no memory of what the Tesco one was like!