I don't know whether there's any current interest in this topic but for what it's worth I was fairly obsessed about cooking pizza at home and would say that there are three main secrets for what to me is the perfect pizza. The best thing is that the basic ingredients can be batched and kept in the fridge and freezer for when the pizza moment grabs you. And from then on a pizza is just turning the oven on and assembling the pizza and cooking it ..... and eating it .....

1. The dough base

2. The topping

3. The cooking temperature

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1. The dough base.

If posssible hunt around for genuine Caputo flour which is milled in Naples and sent around the world to the best pizzeria. Make what is described in Italy as a bigga and in France as a poulish. This is a sour dough starter. This is often fed daily and has been kept going in traditional pizzeria for decades ... but a good approximation I have worked out can be cheated. In France this mix is used to make traditional bagguettes .... in a steam induced oven. Simply get some caputo flour or if you cxannot find caputo the finest hardest flour you can .... possibly Canadian extra hard. Add some water, and a few grains of dried yeast. Leave that wet mix ie a mix with a cling film cover that looks like double cream in a warm room for a few day until the mix has doubled in foam and bubbles. The longer it takes the closer to a real sourdough mix it is. In real life the sourdough starter has come from natural airborne yeasts and my approach is simply a pragmatic cheat that I worked on myself.

When your ready to make your first pizza use more flour and water and some salt and a small amount of olive oil - and if you like a few grains of sugar to encourage the fragrance and crispness - and make a wetish dough with half of the bigga. The other half of the bigga can be stored in a plastic ontainer (chinese takaway container does it) and keep that mix in the fridge for your next pizza and all pizzas in trhe furture. Simply take half of the mix to use for the pizza and feed the mix with more flour and water for future pizzas. In the best pizzeria the dough mix is at it's very best as a one day old dough ie ie make it a dough ball today for tommorows pizza. The dough ball should be a little weter and more pliable than a normal bread mix. Let it rise to double bulk and when you knead use a pulling motion to stretch the potential air bubbles to be long bubbles rather than round bubbles. Let it rise knock back and then shape to a round and let it rise again. To me a proper pizza is a very thin base with very little topping. It's a bread with a bit of topping not a thick stodgy goo as enjoyed in the US more than in Italy.

2. The topping. The key is less is more. Leave a wide pizza base edge so it chars and make a tomato mix out of whatever is your taste. I bulk make a tomato mix from tinned tomato, tomato pure, slowly fried onion and some oregano salt and sugar. I then mouli this down after it's been cooked a long while into a thick paste. This has intense flavour and a few sppons is enough for a pizza. EDITED TO ADD. If you have a bottle of ouzo around a few spoons of ouzo to the tomato mix adds an anise taste that approximates basil and adds a lovely under-taste. The tomato mix on the pizza shouldn't be thick. Put on that mix your choice. Mine is a few prefried mushrooms (raw mushroom makes the pizza wet) and some ham and some mozzarela. The tomato mix can be kept in an ice cub tray in the freezer and a couple melted in the microwave when you want a pizza. I keep a basil plant on my window shelf and pull a few leaves off for garnish. I also paint the dough edge with a little olive oil.

3. Cooking. The hotter the oven the better the results. You want the base to be as thin as possble with charred areas but soft dough - this takes speed and temperature. The only inexpensive kitchen appliance I have found is the
Ferrari Divina Pizza oven .... very dangerous ... ignore what it says - it reaches around 600 degrees and other look-alikes do not - they only go to around 250 degrees and Raytemp 3 a temperature guage that goes to 500 degrees or more ..... for above! I also use a beehive oven in summer.


The pizza takes around a minute to cook.

I've probably gone to too much trouble here ... but if any FT'er is obsessed with a truly wonderful pizza at home and is obsessive about perfection then these suggestions might be a starting point for them as it summarises several years of my obsession and experimentation.