Bring the mouth-watering tastes of an Italian trattoria to your home with this complete guide to creating the best pizza. With crispy, stone-baked bases topped with fresh flavours, Italian pizza is a deliciously healthy summer feast, and savouring your pizza in the summer sun will make your garden feel like a little piece of the Amalfi coast!
Making and preparing your dough
You’ll need:
- 1 kg white bread flour or Tipo ’00’ flour, or 800g strong white bread flour or Tipo ’00’ flour, plus 200g finely ground semolina flour
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 x 7 g dried yeast sachets
- 1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
- 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Making a great dough is the first step to creating a delicious pizza. Follow Jamie Oliver’s instructions on how to make the best pizza dough.
The perfect tomato sauce
You’ll need:
- The best quality tinned plum tomatoes you can find
- A good pinch of salt
- A handful of fresh basil
The best Italian pizza has a simple tomato sauce that lets the natural flavour of tomatoes shine through, emphasised with a pinch of salt and the delicate, fresh flavour of basil. Get the best quality tinned plum tomatoes you can find, and create a sauce by blitzing them in a food processor together with your salt and basil.
Fresh, authentic toppings
You’ll need:
- Fior de latte or mozzarella
- Freshly grated parmigiano reggiano
- A few leaves of fresh basil
Optional:
- Aubergine
- Courgette
- Bell pepper
- Prosciutto
- Tuna
- Cured meats
- Blue cheese
- Rocket
Keep your pizza simple with fior de latte or mozzarella, some parmigiano reggiano, and a few leaves of fresh basil, or create a masterpiece like a pizza ortalana by adding thin slices of aubergine, courgette, and bell pepper.
Prosciutto, blue cheese, tuna, and cured meats are also popular Italian pizza toppings. If you’re keeping it authentic, avoid using chicken or meats.
The perfect bake
To make the best pizza, you need to bake it at a high temperature (over 300°C) – this creates a deliciously crispy base and seals in the mouth-watering flavours without burning your toppings.
Our Earthfire Outdoor Pizza Oven bakes pizzas evenly at over 300°C, and retains heat for up to two hours making it perfect for a lazy evening meal in the garden. It’s wood-fired, and is beautifully designed using ceramic. You’ll love the way it looks as much as the way it cooks!
It will only take about 2 minutes for your pizza to bake – keep an eye on it and once the crust has browned and the cheese has melted, your pizza will be almost cooked. Check that the bottom of the base has a nice even colour, and then remove the pizza from the oven, using your complimentary pizza peel add a handful of rocket, and enjoy.
From baking deliciously authentic Italian pizzas, to smoking food and barbequing, our Earthfire Ceramic Pizza Oven is the must-have garden accessory. It’s easy to use, portable, and cooks at a high temperature making it ideal for outdoor entertaining.