La pizza rossa

Whe are cooking al red this week for a study in Scarlet.

Whit this weeks theme for the I Heart Cooking Clubs; A study in scarlet it didn't took me long to decide what i should make going trough my Apples for Jam cookbook i found this Pizza recipe. In the red section ofcourse. It's just a plane normal pizza but the taste was magnificent and in my mind i'm making all this variations on it already, with cheese ofcourse or maybe an all sweet one with apple or other fruits. This bready crust i think it goes with everything!

La pizza Rossa

Tessa Kiros(Apples for jam, page 53)

Cuts up in to 12- 15 pieces

Dough:
435ml (15¼ fl oz/1¾ cups) warm water
20g(¾ oz) fresch yeast, crumbled, or 10g(¼ oz) active dry yeast
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
600g (1lb 5oz/4¾ cups) all-purpose flour

Tomato topping:
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large garlic clove, peeled and squashed a bit
800g(1Lb 12 oz) tinned diced tomatoes
3 basil leaves, torn

Put the water, yeast, honey, olive oil and 3 fistfuls of the flour in a bowl. Mix with electric beaters until smooth. Cover the bowl and leave for 20-30 minutes, until the mixture froths up and looks foamy on top. Mix in the reat of the flour and 1½ teaspoons of salt. The dough will be very soft and sticky(don't be tempted to ad more flour). Now using a dough hook, mix for about 4-5 minutes so everything is completly incorporated. If you don't have a dough hook just mix it with your hands, slapping it from one side of the bowl to the other as it will be too soft to knead. Cover the bowl with a couple of cloths and leave it in a warm and draughtfree place for about 1½ hours, or until the dough has puffed up well.

Very lightly oil a 28x38x4cm(11x15x1½inch) baking tray. Punch down the dough with one firm blow to the centre. Spread the dough gently into the tray, right out to the edges, working it with your palms to stretch it along the tray. If it won't stretch easily, leave it to relax for another 5 minutes and then gently stretch out the dough, starting from the centre and flicking your palms across it. Make sure the dough doesn't break anywhere and that it is more or less evenly spread. Put in a warm draught-free place. Arrange four glasses around the tray and drape a couple of tea towels or a towel over them like a tent to completly cover the tray(so that the dough doesn't stick to the cloth as it rises). Leave for 45 minutes or so, until the dough has puffed up.

For the tomato topping, heat the oil with the garlic in a saucepan and, when you begin to smell the garlic, add the tomatoes, basil and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cook for about 15 minutes over fairly strong heat, until the sauce loses its wateriness and starts to look thick and bubbly. If you like, you can whiz it a couple of times with a hand-held blender to make it a little smoother, but still keep some chunks.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to its hottest temperature.

Dimple the top of the dough here and there with your fingers, so that the tomato has some nests to settle into(take care not to deflate your dough, though). Scatter the tomato sauce over the top and gently spread it out with the back of the ladle. It may seem like a lot of sauce, but it keeps the pizza lovely and moist. Put the tray in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes(depending on the strenght of your oven) until the pizza is golden and a bit crusty here and there. Check that the bottom is crusty and crisp, too, and cook for longer if you need to. cut up into squares to serve. I think this is best warm but it can also be served at room temperature, or reheated.


Notes:
- I used only half of the ingredients and that was enough for one round pizza baking tray.
- Heated the oven to 270C(518F) and baked the pizza for the advised 20minutes and it came out right the way whe liked it.