Pizza continued: Preparing the sauce and toppings
Back to previous page: Making the Dough
At this point you should have your dough in bowls in the fridge. Before you shape the bases, you need to get everything else ready, as once you have the dough ready you need to work quickly and you won't have time to start slicing cheese or blending sauce.
The cheese
Mozzarella is the cheese that is traditionally used on an authentic Italian style pizza. Since you're going to this much trouble, it's worth spending the extra money on buffalo milk mozzarella - the flavour is distinctive and memorable, subtly earthy with a more "animal" fragrance (and I mean that in a good way) than the cow's milk version. If you can't find buffalo mozzarella, use a cow's milk mozzarella (called "fior di latte" or "flower of the milk" in Italian) that has come in a ball shaped lump in a bag of brine - avoid the rubbery stuff that comes in a rectangular block. Whether you use cow or buffalo mozzarella, it needs to dry out a little before it goes on your pizza, otherwise you'll get a soggy crust. First of all, drain the cheese thoroughly, then slice into very thin circles - as many as you can manage. Leave the circles on a wad of paper towels for about half an hour while you prepare the other ingredients.
The tomato sauce
Most pizza chefs use canned tomatoes to make their sauce. The traditional variety is called San Marzano, but these can be expensive and difficult to find. The brand I use is called Napolina - the difference in taste between these and San Marzano is negligible, especially once the sauce is combined with the other ingredients. I strongly recommend that you buy chopped, rather than whole, canned tomatoes: in my experience, the chopped ones fill the can better so you get more solid tomato and less juice. The chopped ones also seem to have fewer seeds than the whole ones.
To make the sauce, drain one can (400g/14 oz) of chopped tomatoes in a sieve. Pour the juice into a glass, add ice and tabasco (vodka optional), and drink. The solid parts left in the sieve are going to be your sauce: put them in a jug, add a good pinch of sea salt, and puree with a blender until completely smooth. This is enough to make 2 pizzas plus a little left over that you can just add to your next pasta sauce or whatever. You don't need to cook the sauce, except when the pizza itself is cooked; the tomatoes were thoroughly cooked in the canning process.
Other toppings
The golden rule when choosing pizza toppings is, "less is more". For this style of pizza, a small amount of two or three toppings as well as the cheese and tomato is plenty. If you want to overwhelm the base with ham, pineapple, sweetcorn, olive, pepper, mushroom and chili, you might as well save yourself the effort of making a really good base and phone out. Some toppings that work really well are:
- fresh basil: dip it in olive oil or your tomato sauce to stop it drying out and burning during cooking, and don't put it on until the top of the pizza has nearly finished cooking under the grill. The last 30 seconds or so should be enough.
- crushed garlic: also in olive oil to stop it burning, and as with the basil, only put it on for the last 30 - 60 seconds of grilling. One large clove is enough for two pizzas: it will cook enough to lose the harsh, pungent, raw garlic taste.
- dried oregano or sage (use dried herbs very sparingly)
- roasted/grilled and skinned red peppers (bell peppers)
- sliced raw onion (it will cook enough to lose the harshness and sweeten)
- black olives
- anchovies
- spicy salami (often called "pepperoni" in English, although Italians refer to roasted peppers as "peperone", so it's a good idea to be specific
- sliced fresh figs, which become beautifully sweet and fragrant when cooked
Getting everything ready
"Mise en place" - which literally means "put in place" - is a very important principle in professional cooking, and is invaluable when making pizza. When I'm making my pizzas, I go through a mental checklist which goes something like this: cheese and other toppings sliced or chopped, arranged in individual piles on a board; dried herbs and pepper mill nearby; flour shaker full and ready to use on clean work surface; sauce blended and with a spoon ready to put it onto the bases; bowls of dough removed from the fridge just before shaping; flexible spatula ready to scrape dough out of bowls; peel or parchment nearby to transfer dough to hot pan (more on this in the section on shaping) and from pan to grill; wooden chopping board and pizza cutting wheel close at hand; plates warmed; fellow diners in the next room with a glass of wine or a cold beer ...
Having all these elements in place and under control allows the process to flow quickly and smoothly. It's also important to check that you have a clear, clean space on the worktop to shape the bases. When you've got all that sorted, it's time for this: