Pizza Authentica D'Laven

Pizza Authentica D'Laven

This recipe is a collection of mine for quite sometime. In actual fact I have been making hundreds or even thousand of pizzas over the years. Mine is of course the authentic gourmet pizza a homemade speciality. My children love them so much and they never resist anything that come out from the oven in the name of pizza. Malaysian, normally thought that pizza is one the popular fast food, just like McD, KFC,Dominos,Burger King,Shakey's,Puzza Hut and many more. For pizza, in Italy and in most western country are their daily food that they consume day in day out. Surprisingly, gourmet pizza are much look for than those fast food joint kind of pizza. Almost any restaurants in Italy have and make their own concoction of pizza, their speciality pizza. This are all gourmet food and they are the original pizza, a real authentic and not pre-prepared or an instant pizza which are normally frozen, thaw and furnish the topping for fast food business. Like most of you love to eat! going to those fast food pizza joints mentioned above.

Sometime, we hear complained that the pizza are lousy today, the crust is soggy and the topping is so thin...so with the taste of the cheese like stale milk. Believe me they always face with consistency issue, much due to the volume they pre-prepared and keeping it frozen for far too long.

The fact is pizza dough must not be frozen for too long.

Today I am going to share with all of you on how to prepare a home made pizza, a real gourmet pizza with all the original ingredients and of course with no additive like MSG or other food and taste enhancer. A fresh from oven pizza with sizzling melting cheese.

My word of caution especially to those Muslim, be extra careful in eating pizza especially the ingredients used. Cheese is a wonderful food, but not all cheese can be consumed by Muslim and so with the canned mushroom and others.

For pizza topping cheese, mozzarella cheese is the most popular, a bit expensive because in preparing mozzarella cheese the process takes longer. Basically, cheese are make from various type of milks, cow, buffalo,goat and camel milk. The process of coagulating the milk, is the point in contention whether the cheese is "halal" or "not halal". The most popular enzyme to make the milk coagulate faster is call "rennet". The issue here the source of enzyme - rennet which can only found in abundance in the intestine of young calf's only. But the most readily and cheapest rennet is from the intestine of the pig. So be extra careful, for that myself being a Muslim I am very much in doubt the kind of cheese they are using in those fast food joints.

The pizza I am making, I can assure you that being so particular I take the time to enquire and demand the supplier, manufacturer and I will do research on the Internets, contacting my fellow Muslim brothers in those country where the product came from. There are few halal cheese you can found in some hypermarket under the brand name of "Dairy Good", "Bega" and "Arla" or any Turkish cheese.Where the enzyme rennet is derive from plant microbial.
Canned mushroom " Narcissus" is not halal, and those without halal logo must be avoided.Okay, so much about cheese... if you need to no more about halal cheese, feel free to contact me.

So, Today I am going to make, a real gourmet pizza, homemade with all the best ingredients available from groceries,hypermarket and my personal herbs collection.

This ingredients will make 3 pieces of x'tra large of 18" pizzas. Enough to satisfy the belly of 8 adults.
Ingredient for the dough.

1 Kilogramme of white flour (8 cups)

1/2 cup of Pilbury's Atta Flour

1 cup of Semolina flour

1 tbsp of sugar

2 tsp of salt

1 cup of milk - low fat

1 tsp of yeast

1 cup lukewarm water

1/2 cup of olive oil.

1/2 tsp of dried oregano

1/2 tsp of dried rosemary

1/2 tsp of dried basil leaf

(You can see from the photo below some of the ingredients that I used- Pilsbury Atta flour,Baker's choice white flour,Olive oil and mozarella cheese by Dairy Good - Halal from Australia)

Preparing the Dough

1. In a small bowl with 1 cup of lukewarm water, sprinkle the yeast, add in 1 tablespoon of sugar and stir it well. Keep it aside for about 10 minutes and let the yeast rise.
2. In a big mixing bowl, add in 4 cups of white flour, Atta flour and semolina, mix these 3 types of flour well. Then add in 2 tsps of salt and again mix it well.
3. Into the mixing bowl pour in the yeast, low fat milk on top the flour and slowly mix evenly, it maybe quite wet, add in the remaining flour 1 cup at a time while slow kneading mix, add in 1 tbsp of olive oil, a bit of oregano,basil and rosemary. Continue kneading for about 10 minutes. Rub around the dough with olive oil, put dough into a seal plastic container, put it inside the middle shelve of your refrigerator and let it rise for next 2 hours.

While you are waiting for the dough to rise, now is the time for you to prepare the sauce and pizza topping. The sauce is another important component of a pizza, though there are a lot of ready made sauce for pizza but nothing can beat a fresh homemade pizza sauce. Topping for pizza can be of many types, depending on your choice and taste or vegetarian, hawaian style, traditional italian, new yorker and your own authentic homemade. Topping may be pre-cooked, or raw which again depends what suit you and your family. For today's pizza will be a touch of traditional Italiano and hawaian with a dash of Malaysian flavor.

a)Making the sauce for pizza.

Ingredients.

6 pieces of full ripen tomatoes (about 1/2 kilo in total weigh)

6 pieces of big red chillies

1 tsp of salt

1tsp of sugar

1/2 cup of olive oil

1 tsp of black pepper - grind

1/2 cup finely chopped oinion

3 bulb of garlic

oregano / basil / rosemary

1. Make a cross thin cut on the larger surface of the 6 tomatoes. Blanch in hot boiling water. Take it out and let it cool for a while, you can easily peel off the skin and core off the seeds if any.
2. Slice the chillies, into a grinder put in all the ingredients, tomatoes, chillies, garlic, salt & sugar, oregano, basil and rosemary. Use the pulse mode of the grinder, until the mix looks smoother.
3. Heat up a saucepan, add in the olive oil and pour the in all the mix from the grinder. Stir up slowly under a slow heat until the composition appears sticky and thick, than add in the finely chop onion. Continue to stir until the onion is soft. Keep the sauce aside to cool down.

b) Preparing the pizza topping.

Ingerdients

1 canned of button mushroom ( Ayam Brand is the best)

1 canned of slice pineapple (Ayam Brand )

1 piece red Bell pepper / capsicum

1 piece of green bell pepper / capsisum

2 cup of minced chicken - white meat or

2 cup of slice chicken frankfurters

1. Slice in what thickness you may, the mushroom,pineapple, bell pepper and you may choose to keep it raw or just blanch it in hot boiling water with salt for 1 to 2 minutes.
2. For the minced chicken or frankfurters, I suggest that you heat in a pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, put a bit of salt to taste , a pinch of oregano, basil, rosemary and grind black pepper for about 5 minutes. 
   
   Some of the topping ingredients, red and green bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, some green and red chillies, slice mushroom. 

 

c)Making the pizza crust. You may choose to make a thick crust or the thin crust for your pizza which may require a different way of kneading the dough.

1. Switch on your oven - if you use the turbo fan oven, heat to 180 centigrade.
2. After 2 hours, takeout the dough from the refrigerator and should double it size. Divide your dough into 3 equal parts
3. On a floured table, knead the dough for about 10 minutes, to prepare a thick crust roll the dough from centre to the edge all around. Fold the rolled dough toward the centre and rolled out from center to the edge for 3 times. Or you may use your hand to flatten the dough just pushing it from centre to the edge all around. The dough should be elastic by now which the indicate the gluten is forming good. The edge will be a bit thicker of about 1/2 inch.
4. Place the dough on a well grease pizza pan, use margerine but olive oil is the better choice for greasing. Or you may use the back of your kueh talam pan - (as shown in the picture) Use a fork to puncture the dough all over the base, on the edge of the dough, rub it with atta flour and lavishly brush with olive oil.

Do the same process for the remaining dough, and for thin crusted pizza, you need not push the dough to the side when roll in.

 Lavish Topping...

 And now in the oven..guess how it will look???