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REAL Italian Pizza
by Amy Hunt
 Have you ever had real Italian pizza? You know, the stuff you see the people eating on the Travel Channel. Not “Americanized” pizza, but the real thing. It is not as difficult and time consuming as one might imagine. I think that American’s have complicated the pizza and are losing out on what’s important like real mozzarella cheese and fresh basil. Paolo Nascimbeni shares his secrets to making an authentic Italian pizza at home on lifeinitaly.com. Take a look---- it’s tempting.
How to prepare an Italian pizza:
Pizza dough
Prepare the dough by mixing together (also with the aid of a bread a machine)
1 and ½ cup of warm water
1 and ½ teaspoon of salt
1 and ½ teaspoon of yeast
3 cups of flour
Wait about 2 hours to rise and you have your pizza dough.
Since I assume most of us do not have a wood firebrick oven in the house. The next best thing is the use of a pizza stone in a normal oven. I have had my pizza stone for over 10 years and I use it to make nice crusty breads (bread does not cook well in a bread machine).
The pizza stone will retain heat from the oven and cook the pizza fast without the need for fattening oils etc. - so when baking you don’t need a greased pan. Just put the dough on the pizza stone. The crust will come out dry and ‘crusty’… (The pizza stone can be used to make excellent bread as well)
Ok use either good canned tomatoes (Just tomatoes – not any pre-prepared sauces) or fresh tomatoes if they are available – You can even mix them together – put them in a food processor and chop them.
Put the mozzarella in the food processor so you will be able to spread it over the pizza.
Now use the rolling pin to make a thin layer of pizza crust. What I do now, it sounds a little strange but it helps a lot, put the raw pizza (the pizza crust that you just rolled out) by itself in the oven for just 1 minute (Reason: if the crust is too soft is very difficult to add tomatoes etc without ruining it) – After 1 minute remove the pizza dough and apply the tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh basil. Place the pizza in the oven for about 5 / 6 minutes ‘till all the mozzarella is nicely melted.
Take it out of the oven and serve. What is nice about this pizza is the unexpected different authentic Italian taste – also there are no greases oils or addictives of any type (like powder garlic so popular in the Italian American food tradition but never used in Italy – so you are not allowed to use it). Anyway, after you practice with a few pizzas I might even give you the permission to try it with different toppings.
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