Thin crust pizza! One of the most delicious food created that I don’t get tired of eating. We love thin crust pizza. Thin crust pizza is much more flavorful and I get to eat a lot of its toppings more than the thick crust that I felt I eating more bread than savoring its flavor. Ever since thin crust pizza was introduced to us, our family prefer the thin crust over the thick one.
As you can remember, I have done a pizza posted last August, Chicken Spinach Pizza. Its crust is on a thicker and chewier side. I used all purpose flour that time and according to my research, using all purpose flour will produce a chewier pizza like that of my previous post. This time, I used the same recipe, minus the nutmeg and used bread flour instead of all purpose flour. The result, a much more elastic dough, thinner and crunchy pizza crust.
I added a quarter cup of tomato sauce to the Marinara sauce to have a thicker consistency. I observed that using canned diced tomatoes produces a thinner or watery type of Marinara sauce. I could have use tomato paste but tomato sauce is much more available in our home.
If you are reading my blog, I usually used processed cheese, quick melt cheese and cream cheese in my recipes. This time, I found some mozzarella cheese bars in the grocery that comes cheaper than the other brands. They also have mild, medium sharp cheddar cheese and mont blanc cheese. Next time I’ll grab some of those cheeses and experiment with it.
The recipe can produce two 14-inch pizza. I divided the dough, used half of it and kept the other half in the fridge since it’s only me and my dad whose in our home today. My mom went to Batangas to celebrate All Saints Day and my two siblings went to work.
I also made some chili olive oil to drizzle over my pizza to add additional flavor and some kick to it. This is an inspiration of Dear Darla Pizza by Yellow Cab. You can go with the ordinary tomato ketchup if you are not fan of spicy ketchups or some nice Frank’s Hot Sauce to spiced it up. Frank’s Hot Sauce goes well with it.
Ingredients
Dough
3 1/2 cup Bread Flour
1/4 cup Bread Flour for dusting
2 1/4 teaspoons Instant Active Dry Yeast
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Sugar
1 1/2 cups Warm Water, 55 to 60 degrees Celsius
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Marinara Sauce
400 grams Canned Diced Tomatoes
1/4 cup Tomato Sauce
1 teaspoon Italian Seasonings
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
salt and pepper to taste
Toppings
Mozzarella Cheese
Bacon
White Onions, sliced
Black Olives
Procedure
For the dough, combine all dry ingredients except the quarter cup bread flour. Give it a quick whisk and set aside.
Mix warm water and olive oil.
Add the olive oil mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well until every dry ingredients are incorporated. Knead for 5 to 8 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic and does not stick to your hands, add additional bread flour while kneading. Shape the dough in to ball and place in a well greased bowl. Cover with damped towel or with a cling wrap and leave the dough to rise for 45 minutes to an hour or until the size of the dough doubles.
When the dough doubled in size, lightly punch the dough and knead for another minute. Divide the dough into two.
Flatten the dough to not more than half a centimeter using a rolling pin. Form into a circle if desired, but since I’m having trouble with shaping, I just flatten it in any direction I want. What I observed here was, the dough is much more elastic compared with working with all purpose flour. Apply or brush some olive oil on the surface of the pizza crust. This avoids sagging of the pizza crust during baking due to the moisture of the Marinara sauce.
Top with Marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese and other toppings and bake for 20 to 25 minutes in a preheated oven at 220 degrees Celsius.
For the Marinara sauce, combine everything in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Spread over the pizza crust dough.
Served with chili olive oil or tomato ketchup or with Frank’s Chili Sauce.
