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Russell's wood fired pizza recipe
- Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients
For the pizza dough
3 kg unbleached bread flour
1 kg stone-ground wholemeal flour (Russell uses biodynamic 80% light which has the coarser bran sifted out)
1 tsp dried yeast
2 tbsp salt
2600 ml rain or filtered water
For the pizza topping
1 thinly sliced onion
Olive oil
2 capsicums
1 zucchini, sliced
1 handful pitted olives
4 tbsp parsley
Salt and pepper
Preparation
For the dough
On a table, mix the flour and yeast and form a well in the middle.
Dissolve the salt in half a litre of boiling water, and add remaining water. If the ingredients are cold the water needs to be hotter. (Work towards body temperature dough). Pour water into the well using one hand to gather in the flour to make a paste first and then a dough. Keep one hand free for adding more water or flour.
When the dough is cohesive but wet and sticky, begin to knead with both hands. Keep a plastic pastry scraper handy to scrape the dough from the table and your hands. Continue folding and turning until a smooth, cohesive, easy-to-work dough has formed.
Place the dough in a steep-sided container like a bucket or pot. If it is cold, put it somewhere warm. If it is very cold, put it in a sink of warm water.
Cover with oiled plastic and a blanket. (Russell uses a foil space blanket from the camping shop).
For pizza, the dough can be used straight away but results will be better the longer it proves.
After about an hour, roll out into balls and set aside to prove for a further 30 minutes or so. Then stretch each ball into a round, about 2.5 cm in thickness.
For the pizza topping
Brown the chopped onion in olive oil and set aside.
Slice zucchini into thin strips, lengthways.
Cut capsicums in half and remove seeds. Place capsicum, skin side up and sliced zucchini in roasting pan and sprinkle liberally with oil. Roast in hot oven.
Remove zucchini when it is cooked .
Once capsicum blisters, take it out of the oven, peel off the charred skin and slice.
Roll out the pizza dough, spread browned onions on top, layer capsicum, zucchini, olives and sprinkle with parsley, salt and pepper.
Leave patches with no ingredients on the pizza dough as this allows the pizza to cook from the bottom up and the top down.
Russell recommends keeping the ingredients to a minimum as the secret to making a great pizza. “Less is more!”
If you enjoyed this Russell's wood fired pizza recipe then browse more Italian recipes, pizza, pie and tart recipes, vegetarian recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.
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