Homemade Meat Lovers Pizza, Including Pizza Dough

So, yesterday my hubby decided he wanted pizza for dinner, which was all good with me because I'd been craving pizza for about a week! We just used our favourite meats, but you could put any topping you like on yours.  Sliced chicken breast, bacon, onion and pineapple with a barbeque base is a nice alternative, or you could throw all your favourite vegies on there. My dough instructions are for a bread machine, but if you don't have one, check out my notes at the bottom of this post to find out how to make pizza dough without the aid of a machine.

Pizza Dough

4 cups of bread flour

1 cup luke warm water + extra 1/2 cup

1 tsp dry yeast

1 tsp white sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 olive oil

1 tsp dried Italian herbs

Put ingredients into your bread machine according to your machines instructions. Mine calls for the liquid first. Put in a cup of water, then the flour and other dry ingredients on top.  Set to a dough only setting and start mixing.  Check it as it goes.  Depending on your flour you may need to add more water.  I've been using Wallaby brand flour, which seems to need more water. But check it and see how you go. If the dough looks too dry and crumbly and not coming together, then add a bit more water, about a tablespoon at a time. With my dough, it sounded a bit sticky after the water went in (by that I mean it was making squidgy noises as it was mixing!), but came together perfectly in the end. You might find you need to get in there with a spoon to make sure everything comes together when you're adding the water... sometimes dough just needs a little encouragement, you know.

The completed dough...

Once your machine goes BEEP to let you know it's done mixing and proving your dough, turn it our onto a floured bench top. Divide into equal parts.  We like thin crust and get four large bases out of this mix. If you prefer thick crust, you could just divide it in half to make a thicker base. 

Divide by pinching to two, then pinch those into two again and so on.

Once you've divided it up, it's time to get your rolling on!  The trick to rolling out even shaped and sized pizza dough is not to move the rolling pin all around.  Instead, turn the dough and keep rolling straight ahead of you. It sounds like such a little thing, but it works. 

When the dough has reached the right size and thickness it's time to line your pizza tray.  Flour the tray with a little flour before putting your pizza base down... but not too much, you don't want your pizza to taste floury! Take a fork and gently make holes evenly over the base.  I find this helps to stop it getting big air bubbles in the base when it bakes.  Then you've come to the creative part... adding your toppings! Yay!! 

The finished rolled out base. Time to get cooking!

Meat Lovers Pizza Toppings

Makes enough for 2 large pizzas

4 tbsp "pizza" tomato paste (we use Leggos "Pizza" sauce with garlic and herbs)

1 cup cheese (any shredded cheddar or tasty blended with mozzarella works well)

100g shaved leg ham

4 thin slices parma ham (also known as prosciutto)

50g thinly sliced chorizo

50g thinly sliced pepperoni

Assembly is pretty much as you would imagine...  Start by gently spreading the tomato paste over the base with a spatula or the back of a spoon. Sprinkle on most of your cheese.  Then arrange your meats.  We start by tearing up the ham first.  Then add the sliced chorizo.  Add the rest of the cheese.  Then we finish by tearing up the parma ham and adding the pepperoni.  

Topped with cheese, ham, chorizo, parma ham so far...

And now with some spicy pepperoni to give it a little kick!

Bake in a moderate oven, around 180 degrees Celcius, for about 15 minutes. We ended up with a crisp base and perfectly golden toppings.  Slice up and enjoy!  

The finished product!

Now doesn't that look delicious? All crispy and golden and full of meaty, cheesy goodness...Ready for nomming!

** Note** We're lucky enough to have a bread machine to do all the work for us in making the dough.  Even if you don't have a machine you can still make this.  You'll just have a little more work ahead you... Mix all the ingredients in a bowl until it comes together as a rough dough. It works best if you use your hands to mix.  Then tip it out onto a floured bench top and knead away until glossy smooth. This is done by pushing the dough away from you with the heel of your palm, then bringing it back to you, turning the dough as you go.  Then put into a bowl, cover with cling wrap and a put it somewhere warm to rise for an hour to an hour and a half. Near a sunny window, but not in direct sun, is good.  The dough should double in size.  Knock it down a bit, divide up and start rolling out your base.  Easy!  If you're still a bit confused how it works, check out YouTube, there'll be an awesome tutorial video of how to make dough by hand.

If you can't find bread flour at your local supermarket, don't stress.  You can use ordinary plain flour.  The only difference is bread flour is ground a bit finer.  But the results shouldn't be too much different.

If you're having a pizza party with friends or family making their own individual pizzas, then you could divide the dough up into eight to ten smaller bases. Same if you have children who want to help you cook their own pizzas.  

Also, you can freeze what you don't want to use immediately by putting it into individual snap-lock bags.  Just defrost in the refrigerator for a few hours before you want to use it.  We used half the dough now and froze the other half this time. If you're storing for a party or to use as smaller bases for one person, you could roll the dough out ahead of time and store in the fridge or freezer between layers of grease proof paper wrapped in cling wrap. It should keep happily in the fridge for a day or so, and in the freezer I find it's fine for about a month (mind you, it never stays in there longer than that at our house!!). 

If you're curious any specific products I used in this, just ask me. : )