pizza bases

How do you perfect pizza bases in a domestic oven? Simple. You use a pizza stone. In Australia, you can pick them up for $10-15 from supermarkets and kitchenware shops. I'm not big on gadgets, but I don't regret the purchase of my stone. You can use it for bread as well. I'm meaning to get around to roasting some sort of animal on it, just to see what happens.

PREP

Combine 2 cups of self-raising flour, 1 tsp caster sugar, 7 g dried yeast and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Form a well and add 200 mL warm water and 1 tbs olive oil. Mix together to form a dough. Knead thoroughly, add to a lightly oiled bowl and place somewhere warm for a hour to rise.

Cheat: If it's a cold day, stick the bowl in the bathroom, turn on the heat lamp and close the door.

COOK

While the dough is rising, place stone in the oven and pre-heat oven to 230*C. Pre-heat the stone for 30-40 minutes. Roll dough directly onto stone. Top with tomato pasatta (roasted and sieved tomatoes). By all means, combine it with chopped herbs, minced garlic and/or diced chilli. Do not--for the love of all things holy--use tomato paste. Tomato paste is a concentrate. Top with a small amount of stuff. Finally, add cheese: mozzarella is the classic choice, but boccocini or even blue cheese (seriously) will serve you well too. Cook until the base is crisp. So long as you don't have too much stuff on top of your pizza, the cheese should be done melting and the base should attain perfect crispiness at about the same time.