Pizza

Pizza

Ingredients:

For making dough -
Wheat flour - 3/4 cup
All purpose flour (maida) - 3/4 cup
Corn flour - 1/4 cup
Olive oil - 1 tsp
Warm water - 1/2 cup (use sparingly to make dough with desired consistency)
Salt - 1 and 1/2 tbsp
Italian seasoning - 1 tsp
Sugar - 1 tbsp
Yeast - active dry vs instant (available in most gorcery stores)

For pizza topping - There are unlimited options. I used to following ones:
Pizza sauce - 1 cup
Onions - 1 thin sliced
Mushrooms - 1 cup
Bell pepper - sliced - 1 cup
Mozzarella cheese - shredded - 1 cup (preferably fresh ball of cheese available in most grocery stores)

Recipe: 

Step 1: Activating yeast - For active dry yeast only. There's no need to activate instant yeast.
Use about 1/2 cup lukewarm water (not too hot, not too cold). Add about 1 tbsp sugar. Mix well. Now add yeast, mix well and cover the cup. Let it stand for about 10 minutes. Yeast is activated when the solution turns frothy.

Step 2: Make dough - Put all three flours into a big bowl. Add oil, salt and italian seasoning to it. Add water (from yeast mixture) gradually and sparingly into the flour to make dough with desired consistency. Keep kneading the dough for about 10 minutes. Make required adjustments with oil and water. Ideal dough is non-sticky and stretchable. Make 3 to 4 dough balls.

Step 3: Fermentation: Coat each dough ball with oil. Cover the bowl and let it ferment at room temperature for about 8 to 10 hours (at least 2 hours). After fermentation, knead the dough again to remove air bubbles from dough.

Step 4: Making pizza:
Preheat oven to 450F. Stretch one dough ball into round shape with a rolling pin to make pizza bread. It should be thick enough to hold the toppings. Dust it with some corn meal and all purpose flour (to prevent pizza bread from sticking). Spray cooking oil to pizza stone. Slide the pizza bread into cast iron skillet. Spread pizza sauce, put all the topping, and top it with shredded mozzarella  Put the skillet into lowest rack of oven. Let it bake for about 14 minutes. By the end of 14 minutes, turn oven to broiler and let it broil for about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove pizza from oven, slice it with a slicer and serve hot.

Enjoy!

Notes:
1. You can use pizza stone instead of cast iron skillet.
2. Broiling the pizza gives the perfect crispy crust. If you do not like crispy pizzas, skip the broiling part. Instead, remove pizza from the oven after cooking for 14 minutes.
3. Why three flours? - This is because wheat and corn flour makes crispy pizza and all purpose flour makes softer pizza. Hence, using all three flours in above proportions makes pizza with perfect balance of softness and crispness.
4. Why sugar to activate yeast? - Sugar is the food for yeast and it helps to boost metabolism and hence activates yeast faster.