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Tips to Stay Clear of Cooking Low-quality Pizza at Home

5th June, 2010 - Posted by health news - No Comments

Excellent hand made pizza is the non plus ultra for a lot of home chefs. From buying flour specially from Italy to modifying their electric ovens to cook at the temperatures you can expect out of a traditional wood-fired oven, people have gone to all kinds of lengths to get the right result. To have delicious pizza at home, however, you don’t need to do all that much. Just pay attention to a few things, and make sure that you are using a quality cooking method. After all, at 300 degrees, you’ll never get a great crust.

Try to stick with a high-gluten flour, and allow it to rise properly, to avoid soft, ‘bready’ crusts. Quick crusts, mixes that include baking powder but no yeast, and pizza crust in a can are all likely to produce a low-quality result, and it is because of how they are put together. You are going to end up with some pretty lousy pizza if you do not use a pretty strong flour, and give the yeast time to work. Don’t take shortcuts if you want a great pie.

Avoid inferior ingredients generally, too. The taste will be noticable, even if you do get a bargain on low-priced cheeses and sauces. Low quality sauces may taste too sweet, or include too many fillers, and many low cost cheeses won’t melt quite correctly. You already know how to tell a great pizza, I’m sure. If things do not seem quite right, it could be the quality of your ingredients that is the problem. No pizza can be better than what you put into it, after all.

Think about what you are attempting to make, and use the right recipe. There are all sorts of pizzas available, from thin New York style pizza to crispy, cracker-like Neapolitan, heavy Chicago deep-dish, and many more. If you are using a recipe intended to make one type, but you are attempting to produce another, you are not going to end up with anything great. Take a look at what you like in a pizza before you start cooking. It’ll help you end up with delicious pies, time and time again.

Bake the pizza correctly, last, but not least. Never use a low-temperature oven to make anything but a pre-baked freezer pizza, and do not expect that to be a good one. High baking temperatures give pizza its usual flavor and texture. Does that mean you need to rig your oven to bake at 900 degrees? No! Use the highest setting on your oven (ideally a gas or wood oven), or purchase a countertop pizza cooker that’ll produce the perfect temperature and texture every time. These devices are consistent in making tasty pizza, and can make delicious pizza in much less time even if they take up a bit of space.

You do not need to go overboard, but it may take some effort to make good pizza at home. You’ll never be stuck with lousy homemade pizza again. Just get the correct ingredients, a good recipe, and use the right baking method!