Homemade Pizza

Prep Time: 15mins

Cook time 30mins

Ingredients

For dough

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2 cups all-purpose flour

Olive oil for kneading

½ tsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

Pinch of salt

Toppings

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Grated Mozzarella cheese

½ cup Olive oil

1 Cup Pizza sauce

Chopped veggies of your choice. I usually prefer Onion & Capsicum. Rest of it like black Olives, tomatoes, Sweet corn, Baby corn, Finely chopped green chilies can be used.

Pizza sauce:

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1 cup Tomato sauce/ketchup

½ tsp red chili powder

½ tsp salt

1tsp oregano

Kneading dough:

Add dry yeast in warm water. Make sure the water is really warm and not hot. Yeast would die if its put in hot water and it wont ferment the dough. Add sugar and leave it aside. When yeast starts fermenting you can see mild bubbles and sour smell like fermented dosa or sour curd. Take all purpose flour in a bowl, add fermented yeast, pinch of salt and knead it. Occasionally use oil to get rid of the stickiness and bonding purpose. Use water adequately to make runny dough. It should be soft enough to flatten it to a base with bare hands. Cover the dough and allow it to ferment for 30mins.

Add pizza sauce ingredients and mix well. Take a pan, dust it with dry flour. Take runny dough, with dry flour flatten it in pan. Your base is ready. Now poke complete base with fork. Brush the base with olive oil. Spread the pizza sauce. Add grated cheese on top of sauce. Add your favorite toppings and bake it.

If you are using a oven, preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place the pizza inside oven and bake it for 30 mins in convention mode(250 degrees). Incase you are making pan pizza, cover the pan with lid and bake it in medium flame for about 20mins.  You know your pizza is ready when you see your cheese is melted and veggies are cooked. Serve it with chili flakes and oregano.

Tips:

1. Use oven if possible. Pan pizzas are good if you are making a thin crest pizza. Usually pan pizza will give you a crispy crest.
2. When you are making pan pizza, make sure you cook toppings separately before adding them to pizza base.
3. Pan pizzas are quick. Keep an eye on the crest make sure it doesn’t get roasted.  Pizzas in oven take easily 30mins for 250 degrees heat.
4. Keep a tap on dry yeast. Expired or very old dated wont ferment as expected.
5. You may add oregano and chilly flakes while baking, but I prefer plain pizza. You don’t want to add too many flavors as not everybody likes it. Its better if you keep them optional while serving.

Indian Masala Chai

Audience : Indian chai lovers

Ingredients:
1/4 cup Cloves(Lavang)

1/2 cup Cardamom(Elaichi)

1/4 cup Black peppercorn(Kaal menasu)

1/4 cup Cinnamon(Chakke)

1/4 cup Dru Ginger(Ona Shunti)

Method: 

Dry roast Cinnamon,Black Pepper,Elaichi & Cloves for 2mins in high flame in non sticky pan. Allow it to cool completely. Blend the roasted spices with dry ginger in mixer to a smooth powder. Store it in air tight container.

Direction to use:

For 4cups of tea, add 1/4-1/2 tsp chai masala with tea powder. For stronger flavor, you may increase the quantity depending on your taste.

Tips:

1. Maintain the sequence as Cinnamon needs more time to roast and Cloves less

2. Powder ginger separately so that a part of ginger powder can be stored separately for ginger chai. That’s another flavor when you don’t want too many spices in your tea.