Luis Troyano's pizza dough | Recipes

Ingredients

• 650g “00” white pizza flour
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 7g instant dried yeast
• 30g extra virgin olive oil
• 350ml cold water
• Extra flour and fine semolina for shaping

How to prepare Luis Troyano's pizza dough

1. Add the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil and the water to a large bowl and start to mix together with your hands. It should come together as a sticky dough ball.
2. Wipe the bowl clean with it and start kneading it on a clean dry surface for around 10 minutes until you end up with a smooth dough. You can also make the dough using a mixer and dough hook (knead for 6 minutes on a low speed).
3. Pop the dough into a lightly oiled large bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Place on one side for around an hour or 2 until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Tip out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Divide it into 4 equal size pieces. You could weigh the dough and divide it accurately for perfect results.
5. Roll each piece into a tight ball and place all of them spaced out on a large baking sheet. Cover them with a damp tea towel and place on one side for around an hour.
6. Make up a mixture of half flour and half fine semolina in a bowl, about 100g of each is enough.
7. To shape a pizza base, take a dough ball and dip it into the flour semolina mix. Also give your worktop a good dusting of the mix. Using your fingers slowly flatten out the dough ball starting from the centre and working outwards gradually stretch it out into a flat pizza base. Keep spinning it on the worktop as you go, dusting it regularly on both sides by flipping it over. Aim for a circle around 12 inches in diameter. Keeping it well dusted will stop it sticking to your worktop and make it easy to transfer to the oven using a pizza peel or flat baking sheet.
8. A couple of tips for you. You can use a rolling pin to shape your pizza base but it won’t be quite as fluffy. You could also shape your pizza base on a piece of non-stick baking parchment making it easy to move to the oven and bake on.
9. Less is more when it comes to topping pizzas, aim for a thin layer of tomato sauce and just a few toppings and a light sprinkling of cheese. Too much toppings will make your pizza soggy.
10. A pizza takes about 2 minutes to bake in a pizza oven, or about 8 –10 minutes in your kitchen oven on its highest setting. If using your kitchen oven then a baking stone is an essential piece of kit for a really crisp base.