Enjoy this masterclass by maestro Franco Pepe - one of the stars of Netflix’s new show, Chef’s Table: Pizza - on how to make your own pizza at home.
Franco Pepe, a pizza chef of world renown, shares his recipe and technique for making what he calls a ‘functional pizza’. Pizza has unjustly earned a reputation as so-called junk food, for being unhealthy. But as Pepe shows us, if pizza is made with the right ingredients and in the right way, it can be healthy and delicious.
The ingredients for the dough are water, 00 flour, 0 flour, salt and yeast. Nothing more. Pepe starts with part of the flour and adds the water, mixing with his hands.
While it’s still liquid, he adds a lump of sourdough and then a few grams of yeast. Kneading with his hands, he forms an elastic ball of dough, then leaves it to prove for 10-12 hours.
Taking the dough and cutting it into 250g sized portions, it is then left to prove for another 2-4 hours. Once it is shaped and flattened, you can choose your own pasta sauce.
Follow the recipe above by chef Mark Moriarty to make your own pizza sauce that will beat anything you can buy in the stores. Add mozzarella and few leaves of basil and you have a perfect margherita.
Cooking your pizza in a wood-fire oven is obviously the prefered choice, but if you don't have access to one, you can get satisfactory results using a pizza stone or a cast-iron skillet.
