Raiders of the best pizza - Part 1

Although this blog will (hopefully) include mostly low carb foods, pizza is my personal secret craving, and I simply can't resist making one every too often. What makes it even more sad is the fact that none of the low carb recipes for the dough come even close to real thing in my taste. Pizza aside, I'm sure there will be few foods coming which don't fit the strict low carb diets, but stepping aside from the trail only makes life more fun, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

For those who might want to try some of my foods yourself, I sadly can't give you exact recipes most of the time since I rarely measure anything, and go more on the gut feeling.

But now, to the food itself - finding the perfect pizza that is. One can't satisfy every different taste out there, but this is no doubt one of the most succesfull pizzas I've ever done myself.
The dough consisted total of around 5dl of cake- and plain wheat flour (yes, durum wheat would have been better but sadly I didn't have any at the time I made this), one sachet of dried yeast, fine seasalt fit to your preferences, pulverized black pepper and quite a lot of the spice mix I found recently - garlicy herbmix. The dough needed some 2 to 3 dl of water, and some extra virgin olive oil.

First, throw in the dry ingredients, including the spices, to a bowl and mix them. Then add the olive oil, quite a bit of it, I usually draw a spiral coming from the outsides towards the center of the bowl, and then some, for good measure. Add the water in small portions to ensure you get the texture you want for your dough.
The dough, after you let it rise for some 30min to an hour, will be enough for two full baking trays.

As toppings for this pizza reaching for perfection I used somewhat more exotic variants of my usual toppings - the pineapple was fresh, mettwurst and salami were from Hungary, thanks to friend couple who visited there recently. I suppose there's no way to make ground meat and onions exotic, but I think we can just forget about those and keep still say it's exotic. :)

I made the tomato sauce myself using one can of chilitomatomash, one can of garlictomatomash and about one can worth of Heinz Ketchup (the only brand I consider to be ketchup). I added some chilipowder, oregano and garlicy herbmix as well as black pepper and seasalt to the tomatomash and mixed them well.

I usually use Oltermanni (Finnish creamy cheese by Valio) since it's the cheese I use the most for other things too and usually have it ready in the fridge, but mozarella and emmental cheeses fit pizzas well, too.

Also, I used bell pepper, which I didn't remember to add 'till the pizza was already in the oven. :)

Chopping up the toppings, girlfriend attacking the pineapple

Preparing the toppings is perfect way to spend the time waiting for the dough to rise.
From the picture above I hope you get some sort of idea on how I chop up my toppings, mettwurst to strips, pineapple to cubes, salami to slices (either half or full slices). Frying the ground meat & onions probably isn't rocket science for anyone, so I doubt there's need to go much into it, let's just say I seasoned them with seasalt and used real butter instead of those hippymargarins and such, of course.

The dough & fried ground meat & onions

Once the dough has risen and toppings are prepared, it's time to roll the dough which I of course forgot to take a photo off, but I'm sure each and every one of you have done it anyway so you should be familiar on how to do it. I usually roll the dough straight on the baking paper (flour it first to avoid the dough sticking to it too tightly), so it's easier to see when it's perfectly sized for the baking tray.

Rolled the doug, spread the tomatosauce

After you're done spreading the tomatosauce all over the rolled dough, it's time to add the toppings. This is also the time when I usually realize I didn't prepare the toppings unless my girlfriend is around to help me remind about it (or do it herself). :)

Toppings & cheese are on!

Done spreading the toppings, I have a habit of putting some under and some over the cheese - in this case, ground meat / onion mix went under together with mettwurst, while pineapplecubes and salamis (and eventually the bell peppers) went on top.

You should preheat your oven too, before getting the toppings on or even rolling the dough depending on how slow your oven is to heat up, so this is the point where I usually realize I didn't preheat the oven and try to figure out something to do while I wait for it to get ready.
I can't say much on the temperature of the oven, since my oven haven't had any temperature markings left for years, but I'd guess it was around 250-275 degrees celsius, or so.

Out from the oven, some with quick fingers managed to grab a slice before photo

Unusprisingly, I had (again) forgotten something, and added the bell pepper slices on top of the pizza after it had already been in oven for a minute or two even though they were supposed to be on it before it went in, but these things happen and don't really ruin the pizza.

The pizza is ready when the edges start to really get some color on them - for my taste, I rather take even few burned spots than undercooked pizza.

This particular pizza was no doubt one of the best pizzas I've ever made myself, but sadly the hungarian mettwursts and salamis are a bit too rare for me to get on regular basis, so can't try the same recipe too often.