Easy Homemade Pizza - No Yeast & No Cook Sauce!

  Hello!
  (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*

I'm currently in a hibernation-like mode, basically sitting in a cocoon of blankets hoping that I'll metamorphosise into a functioning member of society in time for Monday morning (but if I turn into a butterfly, thats cool too). 
Just kidding, I've actually had a reasonably productive day, by Sunday standards at least, I mean I didn't wake up at 12 and stay in my pyjamas all day so thats good. I did however cook up a storm in the kitchen, it was catastrophically messy and took far too long cleaning up - woes of a messy cook! so now I feel like I deserve this second cup of spiced chai and another episode of HTGAWM (annalise keating is goals), I've also re-watched some Planet Earth II because its the best thing ever. 
Now before you start getting too envious please be aware that I also made homemade pizza 
الحمد لله

But rest assured you can have it too, in the next hour or so - its that quick and easy! I love this recipe because the base is amazing, soft yet firm enough to hold the gazillion toppings I insist on putting on it & it has no yeast! so it saves so much time because there's no waiting around for the dough to rise. Also if that wasn't enough this recipe has my favourite pizza sauce, which is also ridiculously easy but with such good flavour. 
Do yourself a favour and hold off ordering the Domino's, have a go at this recipe and let me know how it goes.

To make it you'll need a few ingredients:

1. Self-raising flour
2. Salt
3. Tomato paste
4. Mature white cheddar
5. Peppers
6. Sweetcorn
7. Tuna/Chicken tikka (or not if you're veggie)
8. Salt & chilli powder

To start with we're going to make the pizza dough so that it can rest while the other ingredients are prepared.

Into a large bowl I added self-raising flour (no specific weight quantity but for 8 medium pizzas, as I ended up making, I used a little less that an entire bag of flour - that's 1.5 kg), to this I added 1 and a 1/2 tablespoons of salt - give this a quick stir. 

Now the trick to making this pizza dough soft and not claggy or thick is all in the technique - so pop your bowl into the sink and turn on the tap to warm, you don't want hot water just reasonably warm. Now start mixing in the water with your hand, keep your wrist motions swift and use a claw-like hand, which introduces air and stops everything sticking to your hand, cue the blurry action shots! 

Keep adding water until your mixture looks like this - not too dry and not too wet, add more water its the former or more flour if its the latter. Also note that you can add water from a jug if it makes it easier to control.

You then need wet your hands and the bowl and start to knead the dough, using your knuckles to press and the motion of your wrists to stretch (please check out the video too, I'm finding this hard to explain!). This aligns the entangled network of gluten proteins in the flour which traps air and makes the dough stretchy (for the science peeps) 

I'm now getting war flashbacks to my biomaterial engineering uni days; electrospinning of PLGA to make aligned fibres with the topology to provide support for myoblast elongation and fibre-reinforced polymer aligned in the z-direction for toughness greater than steel.. cool but try writing an seven page assignment on it with calculations x_x

You knead to keep dough-ing this until it looks like the picture above, the dough has has a sheen to it and is soft to the touch. (p.s. sorry, there's just too many dough related puns, I couldn't help it!). Then leave your dough to sit while you get on with prepping the rest of the ingredients.

The no-cook tomato sauce - now this is so easy you might assume that it couldn't possibly be any good, but alas the opposite is true, sometimes, simple is best. All you need is you desired quantity of quality tomato paste, this is a thick and rich tomato concentrate with intense flavour which I love in a pizza sauce (also aint nobody got hours for cooking fresh tomatoes, which won't even have the same flavour pay-off). Then add half a tsp of red chilli powder and half a tsp of salt, stir and add 4-5 tblsp of cold water - mix to incorporate. Add more or less water depending on how liquidy you want your pizza sauce. That's it!

Now chop your veg, I had peppers, cherry tomatoes and sweetcorn (& pineapple - although not for me because I'm not a fan of sweet on my savoury). Grate your cheese, mature cheddar is good but you do you - mozzarella, parmesan, emmental, romano etc. (yeah showing off my cheese knowledge, so what). Also whipped up some one-pot Peri-peri chicken (lemme know if you want the recipe, it can used for wraps and sandwiches too) & I drained a tin of tuna. 

Now back to the pizza dough, roll some large dough balls by rolling the dough in your palm then using your rolling pin flatten the dough to make your base, (I've said dough/roll one too many times) 

Now heat up for pan, or tawa if you have one, its basically a large flat frying pan. You don't require any butter or oil, just whack your flat dough on to the hot pan - actually don't whack, place it nicely!

Keep it on high heat til bubbles appear on the surface, then flip and cook the other side for less time since its already cooked through. Once its cooked, the darker side (the one cooked first/for slightly longer) will be the bottom of the base and the lighter, bubblier side will be the top.

Then all you've got to do is the fun part, add the toppings! Spread on a generous amount of the sauce, add the sweetcorn, peppers and chicken tikka or tuna. Scatter on the cheese, sprinkle on dried mixed herbs, slices cherry toms, torn up basil leaves and thinly sliced red onion if you have it. Omit and add ingredients as you wish.

All that's left to do is put the pizza in to a hot grill and cook until the cheese is all melted and golden. Then slice up with a pizza cutter and consume. 

😋

Enjoy!

Q x