Eat

A freshly cooked Margherita pizza. Credit - rawpixel.com

At the core of Bytes and Bites is the combination of coding and pizza with a side of community. While we order from various pizza chains for our meetups pizza is a satisfying and relatively easy to make. So, to keep with the theme of sharing knowledge here is recipe for a simple Margherita pizza:

Ingredients

Dough

  • 150g strong bread flour
  • 1/2 tsp yeast
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tbsp olive oil
  • 100ml warm water

Sauce

  • 50ml passata
  • 1 small clove of garlic
  • 1/2 tsp of dried basil or 6 - 8 basil leaves
  • 1/2 tsp olive oil
  • salt and pepper to taste

Toppings

  • Mozzarella to taste

Recipe

Dough

  • Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl
  • Make a well, or dent, in the pile of dry ingredients
  • Add the water and oil to into the well and mix with a spoon or clean hands
  • Empty the dough onto a clean surface that has a light dusting of flour and knead the dough for 5-10 minutes
  • Return the dough to the bowl (optional: lightly oil the bowl first) and cover with a tea towel

Sauce

The sauce can be cooked to bring the sweet richness of the tomatoes out, it can be made with a simple rough chopping of the ingredients, or simply all added to a blender or food processor.

Cooking

  • Crush, grate, or finely chop the garlic and add to a pot or pan with heated oil
  • Let it fry for 30 seconds on a medium high heat, moving regularly to avoid burning
  • If using dried basil add it now and let it fry for a few seconds
  • Add the pasata to the pot/pan and mix the garlic in before leaving to heat for 15 minutes with regular movement
  • If the sauce has reduced too much and the volume is too little add some water and mix through
  • If using fresh basil roughly chop it and add it to the sauce before taking it off the heat

Chop & Mix

  • Use a grate, dice, or crush your garlic and add to a bowl
  • Add pasata and olive oil to the bowl and mix
  • Roughly chop your basil and add to the bowl if fresh. If dried add directly to the bowl
  • Mix the sauce, add salt and pepper to taste, mix against

Blend

  • Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend

Pre-heat the oven

  • Heat the oven to 220C for a fan oven, if you have a pizza stone use it otherwise place a tray in the oven whilst it heats. Pizza ovens should be at about 400C

Toppings

  • Cut the Mozzarella into slices or tear into pieces with your hands

Making the base

  • Flour your clean surface and gently knead the dough on it
  • Form the dough approximately into a ball on the lightly floured surface
  • Use a rolling pin, or another clean cylinder to flatten the ball into something approximating a circle with ~25cm diameter

From base to Pizza

  • Place the pizza base on a lightly floured baking sheet
  • Add the sauce to the base smoothing with the back of a spoon, it doesn’t need to be perfect
  • Evenly scatter your Mozzarella across the base
  • Place the pizza and baking sheet onto the preheated stone or tray (be careful to not burn yourself or damage your kitchen surface). If cooking in a pizza oven you will not need the baking sheet in the oven
  • If in a regular oven cook the pizza for 8-10 minutes, checking to confirm the base is cooked to your wishes. If in a pizza oven cook for 90-120 seconds
  • Remove from your oven of choice, put the pizza on a plate and enjoy!

Bonus seasoning

  • Try some chili infused olive oil on your pizza once cooked
  • A few fresh basil leaves will impart a lot of flavour and will nicely garnish the pizza
  • “Pizza oil” usually works well on most pizzas as a dressing post cooking – mix; olive oil, crushed garlic, dried oregano, dried basil, and a little salt