Wizard Recipes

Home-baked pizza is different in just about every way from calling the delivery guy: At home, you have complete control over ingredients, and-once you get good at it-you’ll be in love with the results. But you have to plan ahead.

Pizza dough is a simple bread dough, made with flour, yeast, salt, and water, usually with olive oil for a little extra crunch and flavor. The toppings are also simple: tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, olives, meat, a variety of vegetables . . . just what you’d expect. But at home you have the option of using better ingredients than the ones they use at a pizza shop, and that makes a huge difference.

The biggest challenge in making pizza is shaping the dough, which can be intimidating. But if you let go of the idea that the pie has to be perfectly round, that hurdle is soon cleared. Baking also has a bit of a learning curve, but you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

Preparing Pizza Dough

A food processor makes pizza dough in a minute. Literally. You can also use a standing mixer or mix and knead the dough by hand, first in a big bowl, then on a floured board. In any case, start to finish, you can have pizza dough ready in about an hour, but to develop more flavor-and make this a do-ahead dish-let it rise and ferment in the refrigerator for 6 to 8 hours, even overnight.

The Shaping

The romantic image of pizza makers spinning, stretching, and tossing the dough into a perfect circle is hard to shake. No denying that kind of treatment yields a gorgeous crust, but it’s neither practical nor necessary.

With even modest experience you’ll get equally good results laying the dough on a work surface and gently pressing it with opened fingertips until it dimples and slowly stretches into shape. (This is how professionals make focaccia, which is just another form of pizza.) Equally easy is to flatten the dough a bit, then roll it.

In either case, patience is key; your goal is to coax the dough into shape, and this is easiest if you allow the dough to rest between steps as you shape it. You can plow right through from start to finish, but whenever you handle the dough it becomes more elastic and more difficult to work (that’s the gluten doing its thing). The rest periods let it relax, which in turn makes it easier for you to shape.

Thick or Thin?

You can make any size or thickness of pizza using the same recipe and technique. It all depends on how you divide and shape the dough. Large, thin pizzas are the hardest to handle because they are more likely to tear during rolling. I usually divide the dough into at least two pies; three or four if they’re going on the grill.

No matter how thin you roll the crust, it will just about double in thickness as it bakes. (The temperature of your kitchen, the toppings, and even how you shaped  the dough will affect this.) You can increase the thickness of the crust somewhat by letting the dough rise for a few extra minutes after you shape it and before topping it, but don’t let it puff up too much or your pizza will have big bubbles and sunken valleys.

The Toppings

Topping pizza is much like saucing pasta; distinct, clean flavors are better than a mishmash of ingredients. You can stick to classic combinations: tomatoes, basil, and Parmesan; tomato sauce and mozzarella; or a little mozzarella with some crumbled sausage or sliced pepperoni.

You can, of course, play around with different meats, seafood, poultry, vegetables, and cheeses, like grilled eggplant and feta or caramelized onions and Gorgonzola or White Pizza with clams and garlic added.

But “house special” territory is trouble; too many ingredients taste muddled on a pizza, and they do no favors to your crust, which really deserves equal billing with whatever you put on it. If you smother the dough with toppings, it will steam as it bakes, turning a potentially crisp and light crust into a soggy mess.

Baking

Pizza must be baked in a very hot oven, 500 F or even higher (professional pizza ovens are around 700°F). The best way to cook pizza is directly on a pizza stone, which crisps up the bottom of the crust and dries it out perfectly. (But pizza is also just fine baked on a flat baking sheet or one with a small lip. And of course there’s always pizza on the grill;)

You want the oven-and the stone-thoroughly heated, so wait a good half hour after turning the oven on before baking.

The ideal pizza stone is a large rectangle; it should be unglazed and relatively thick. Once you’ve got the stone, you really need a peel-the board with a handle that looks like a large Ping-Pong paddle-to simplify the process.

Sprinkle flour or cornmeal on it and you can shape and top the dough directly on the peel, then just slide it right onto the stone. Wooden peels are more attractive than metal ones but can get a little dingy looking after a while (you can sand yours if it gets too stained); metal peels are much easier to clean.

One more thing to remember about equipment: If  you use a baking sheet to bake the pizza, grease it with a little olive oil to keep the dough from sticking, rather  than dusting the surface with flour or cornmeal as you would with a peel. Once you do that, just press the dough right onto the pan to shape it.

Cutting and Serving

Pizzas with little or no cheese-or other rich ingredients that might congeal when cooled-are also good served at room temperature, like bread. You can cut pizza into wedges like pie or into smaller squares, which are good if you’re feeding a crowd or just prefer smaller pieces.

Because every recipe is different, experimentation is necessary. There are numerous ways to make a recipe healthier. Of course, not every experiment works. It may take several attempts to achieve the desired taste and consistency.

Once the modified recipe meets your expectations, file it for future use.

As a start, try these methods:

• Reduce the amount of fat, sugar, or salt.
• Delete a high-fat ingredient or seasoning.
• Substitute a healthier ingredient.
• Change the method used to prepare the recipe.
• Reduce the amount of meat in the recipe

Can an Ingredient Be Omitted?

Determine whether any ingredients can be omitted. Sugar, fat, and salt are likely candidates because in many instances they are used mainly for appearance or by habit. To reduce sugar, omit candy coatings, sugary frostings, and syrups.

Nuts, although nutritious, are high in fat and contribute significant calories. Additional condiments that add unwanted fat and calories include coconut, whipped cream, mayonnaise, butter, margarine, and sour cream.

Pickles, catsup, olives, and mustard are low in calories. However, because these condiments are high in salt, persons who have high blood pressure or heart disease generally should limit their use.

Can a Substitution Be Made?

Substituting ingredients that are lower in fat, sugar, and salt can make a significant difference in a recipe. For example, use skim milk rather than whole or 2 percent milk. Products made from pureed prunes and apples or mashed bananas often can be used as a replacement for butter, margarine, or oil. These products also can be used in homemade baked goods or box mixes

Be cautious when using fat-free spreads (such as fatfree margarine or cream cheese), “artificial” sweeteners, or salt substitutes in cooked foods. Most fat-free spreads contain a significant amount of water. This can change the outcome of the recipe by affecting its leavening or by leaving the food runny. Some sweeteners (such as aspartame) lose their sweetness when exposed to heat.

Heat can make some salt substitutes (such as those containing potassium chloride) strong or bitter tasting. For these reasons, these products generally should be restricted to recipes that do not require cooking or are used as condiments when foods are served at the table. In most instances, success depends on patience and a bit of creativity.

If one substitution does not yield the desired result, try again. Another substitute or a different amount of the same substitute may work better.

Can the Amount of Fruits, Grains, and Vegetables in the Recipe Be Increased?

Increasing the amount of vegetables, grains, and fruits in a recipe can both improve taste and increase the nutritional quality of the food. For example, when cooking a soup or stew, use three times as many vegetables (by measure) as meat.

Add generous portions of mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, and green pepper to pizza. Make pizza even lower in fat and calories by omitting or decreasing the cheese. Alternatively, choose a lower-fat cheese, such as mozzarella (made from skim milk), and use less of it.

If possible, eliminate the meat or add only a small amount of lean meat. If you are making your own crust, make it thin and use whole-grain flour. Pizza, if served with a salad and eaten in moderation, can be an enjoyable and nutritious meal.

To get at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, add them to foods that do not typically include these ingredients. For example, add chopped pieces of fruit or vegetables to rice, add fruit toppings to toast or pancakes, or top meats with chopped vegetables.

For each serving of meat (a serving is 2 to 3 ounces of meat), try to eat at least 1 serving each of fruit, vegetables, and grains. When possible, start your meal with a healthful salad. This often helps you decrease the amount of high-calorie food that you eat later in the meal.

The more servings of grains, vegetables, or fruit, the better, because these are both filling and high in nutrients.

Apart from breastmilk, no single food contains all the essential nutrients the body needs to be healthy and function efficiently. The nutritional value of a person’s diet depends on the overall balance of foods that is eaten over a period of time, as well as on the needs of the individual. A healthy diet is likely to include a large number or variety of foods, from each of the food groups, as this allows us to get all the nutrients that we need.

We need energy to live and this is provided by the carbohydrate, protein and fat in our diets. But the balance between these nutrients must be right for us to remain healthy. Getting the right amounts of vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and water is also important for health.

So what becomes as important as the type of foods we eat, is the amount and frequency that we include different foods in our diet. All foods can be part of a healthy diet, so you don’t have to give up the foods that are a real treat, as the key message is that it is the overall balance of foods that is important for health.

The food groups

We can think of all foods as belonging to one of five different food groups:

• Bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods
• Fruit and vegetables
• Milk and dairy foods
• Meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein
• Foods and drinks high in fat and/or sugar.

We will look at these food groups in more detail on the following pages, but let’s first think about the proportions of these food groups in our diet.

Our diets should be based on bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods and rich in fruit and vegetables. A variety of foods from these two groups should make up two-thirds of the food we eat. Most of the remaining third of the diet should be made up of milk and dairy foods, meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein, with limited amounts of foods and drinks high in fat and/or sugar.

It might be helpful for you to think of your diet as a big plate, with sections representing the different food groups. This is the healthy eating model that we use in the UK to describe a healthy varied diet and it is called the eatwell plate.

You should aim to achieve this balance every day, although it is not necessary to achieve it at every meal.

This guide is appropriate for most people over the age of two years, including: vegetarians; people of all ethnic origins; people who are a healthy weight for their height as well as those who are overweight; and pregnant women. People under medical supervision or with special dietary requirements may want to check with their doctor if this general description of healthy eating applies to them.

Children under the age of two years have high energy needs compared to their size and capacity for food so some of the foods (especially those low in fat or high in fibre) included on the eatwell plate are not suitable for them. But between the ages of two and five years, children can make a gradual transition towards the type of diet depicted in the eatwell plate.

For most healthy people, eating a healthy varied diet will provide all the vitamins and minerals the body needs. There are certain times in our lives when we may benefit from taking supplements, e.g. when you are thinking about having a baby or when you get older and you need to take a vitamin D supplement. But you should remember that supplements cannot replace a healthy diet.

Here are two easy examples to help you see that by making very simple changes to your diet, you can easily achieve the right proportions of different food groups within a meal.

Pizza:

Pizza can contain ingredients from the four main food groups:

• A dough base – from the  bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods group
• Tomato puree and other vegetables such as mushrooms, sweetcorn and peppers – from the fruit and vegetable group
• A moderate amount of cheese, or low fat cheese - from the milk and dairy foods group
• A moderate amount of ham or tuna - from the meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein group.

Bacon sandwich:

A bacon sandwich can contain ingredients from three main food groups:

• Two slices of thick cut wholemeal bread – from the  bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods group
• Lean, grilled bacon – from the meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein group
• The sandwich can be filled with plenty of lettuce and tomato and served with a glass of pure fruit juice or a piece of fruit – from the fruit and vegetable group
• If served with a glass of low fat milk, all four groups would be met.