So, I had been reading lot of pizza making experiences, going through videos of Italian chefs, my vision was to make a neapolitan pizza, as authentically as possible. So, first I procured all the required instruments and ingredients required for this experiment.
I had bought Bajaj's baking oven, 00 flour, yeast, olives, jalapenos and I was ready to start. I had also bought my mother dough maker, so I planned to use that. Pizza dough needs to have very high hydration, otherwise it dries out in oven. So, I worked on making an elastic and sticky dough.
It's slightly tough to manage, but can be managed using oil in hands or dry flour. I covered the dough with a wet cloth, and let it stand for 3,4 hours, so that yeast can work its magic, it ended up growing in size and with a slightly sour smell.
After that, I divided into small balls, put olive oil in pizza tray, used aluminium tray provided with oven, spread olive oil on top and stretched it with my hands. Then I covered it with home made tomato sauce. Tomato sauce contained sauteed garlic, onions of very small size, blended tomatoes, kept slightly chunky and ragu sauce bought from market.
Then I just covered it with olives, drizzled with olive oil, and voila, it was ready for oven. In oven I kept it for 5 minutes on lowest tray for baking the crust crispy and took it out, then covered with mozzarella cheese and then kept it on top tray for browning the cheese.
The results came out as fantastic and yummy pizza was ready to be served to the family. I will rate it somewhere between dominos and pizza express. The truely authentic pizza requires even better flour with high protein content and a wood fired oven and is a highly scientific and artistic process. For home cooks, a pizza like the one made below is a definite win !
