Pizza Night

By Crivenica

Since I’ve been back to Jakarta, I’ve been eating like crazy! It shows on the scale and the tighter fit of my pants. I told myself that if I kept up with my exercise, I could eat whatever I wanted without gaining any weight. It was true up to a point, but not with the way I’ve been eating all the fried food, dishes drenched in coconut milk, rich creamy french food, and all the desserts!

I know I should get myself back into eating healthy and low calorie food or I would be back where I was 16 kilos ago, but sometimes I can’t help myself! One of my weaknesses is pizza. When I was in Kathmandu, I actually always allowed myself a couple of slices of the Road House Cafe’s roasted vegetable pizza a week during my weight loss program. But surprisingly, I can’t find a pizza I like here in Jakarta. 

There are more restaurants that offer pizza here from the big-chain ones to the more pricy italian restaurants, but none of their pizzas is really great. In fact, I don’t get this trend of cracker thin pizzas that some of these italian restaurants serve. I like my thin crust pizza, but not when it’s as thin as paper! So we stopped ordering pizza in restaurants and started a new tradition of home-made pizza night at home. Making a pizza is actually pretty easy. It’s just about putting all the elements together once you get those elements ready. Sure, it takes longer than calling for a pizza, but now I can get a pizza ready from scratch in under two hours. 

Since David just left for a business trip to Canberra, Australia, I invited my parents for a pizza night tonight so I wouldn’t get too lonely. I made two-sided pizza of pepperoni-tomatoes and the works with home-made italian sausage. Below is the recipe if you’d like to try making your own pizza at home.

L-R: yeast mix, flour mix, kneaded dough, dough to rise

Pizza Dough 

Makes two cookie-sheet sized pizzas or 3-4 medium-size round pizzas

400 gr     good bread flour (3-1/3 cups)

100 gr     semolina flour (1/2 + 1/3 cups)

1/2 tbs     salt

325 ml     tepid water

2 tbs        extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tbs     sugar

7 gr         dry yeast

Mix the olive oil, sugar and yeast into the water and leave it aside for a few minutes. Sieve together the bread flour, semolina flour and salt. You can do this directly on a clean smooth surface, or I just do it in a large bowl. Make a well in the flour mix and pour the liquid mix into the well. Using a fork, start mixing the flour with the liquid little by little until it was hard to use the fork, then start using your hands. If you have a bread maker or a stand mixer, you can do the mixing with that. Mix it until all the liquid and flour are incorporated and knead the dough for a few minutes until the dough is smooth. Form it into a ball and place it in a bowl greased with a bit of olive oil, cover with a damp cloth and leave it in a warm area for about an hour to rise. 

As you wait for the dough to rise, prepare the italian sausage below.

The making of Italian sausage

Italian Sausage

1/2 lb minced pork

2 tsp   fennel seeds

1 tsp   chili flakes

1 tsp   salt

a small handful of chopped parsley

Dry saute the fennel seeds for five minutes until they’re golden brown- keep moving the pan to prevent the seeds from burning. With a pestle and mortar or spice grinder, grind the fennel seeds and mix it well into the pork with the salt, chili flakes and chopped parsley. Leave it aside and prepare the tomato sauce.

The Easiest tomato sauce

5-6 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 cans of good quality plum tomatoes 

fresh basil

chopped parsley

salt to taste

Saute the garlic with olive oil until the aroma comes out, dump in the tomatoes with their juices. Crush them if they are whole. Bring to a boil and add fresh basil, season with salt. If it’s too acidic, you can add a pinch of sugar to balance the taste. Let it cook for 10 minutes in medium to low heat. At the last minutes, add the chopped parsley and cook for another few minutes. Set it aside. 

The pizza before topped with more cheese
and going into the oven

Prepare your other toppings. My favorites are sliced mushrooms, black olives and onions. By the time you’re done with those, your dough will be ready to check. It should have doubled in size. Punch the air out of the dough and knead the dough on a flour-dusted surface for a minute or two. Just before you roll out the dough, heat up your oven to its highest temperature. Roll the dough out about 15 to 20 minutes before you’re ready to use them. I use a 12” x 14.5” pan and with this dough I can make two pans of regular thin (but not paper thin) crust pizza. I would roll a half of the dough about a half of cm thin to fit the pan, and the crust will bake into about 1cm thick crust, just the way I like my pizza.

Before putting on the tomato sauce and toppings, pre-bake the roll-out dough for 3-5 minutes. Take it out and spread the tomato sauce on the surface, sprinkle some shredded good quality mozzarella cheese, then add your favorite toppings. I would put mushrooms, onion, black olives with chunks of italian sausage on one pizza and perhaps put some pepperoni and fresh tomatoes on the other. But since it’s your pizza, you can put whatever you want on it!

The pizza eaters

Pizza night is always fun when it is only David and myself, but it’s even more fun when we have other people over. Last weekend, we had our friends Ari and Shilla to join pizza night and last night my parents brought their friends to help me devour the pizza. Nothing feels better than to see friends enjoying the results of my work in the kitchen. So who’s coming next weekend?