Pepperoni and Basil Pizza with Avocado
current situation: home made pizza
Pizza cut in squares, which is how you cut a pizza you made on a tray, and half an avocado next to it, which is mine and is better than it sounds.
The avocado is the salad. Cold, fatty, bland, dusted with pepper — it does the job rocket would do, except nobody has to pretend to want rocket. Scoop a bit onto a hot square and it works.
Basil leaves go on whole and after the bake. Under the heat they go black and taste of nothing; laid on at the end they wilt from the cheese and stay green.
- Makes
- 8 squares
- Hands-on
- 20 minutes
- Dough
- Overnight, cold
- Basil
- After the oven
What you need
The dough
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1 1/4 cups cold water
- 1 tsp instant yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for the tray
On it
- 3/4 cup crushed tomatoes, with salt and a little garlic
- 2 1/2 cups low-moisture mozzarella, grated
- 25 slices pepperoni
- A large handful of fresh basil leaves, whole (from my garden)
- Chilli flakes
On the side
- 2 avocados, halved and stoned
- Coarse cracked black pepper
- Flaky salt
- A squeeze of lime
How it goes
1 — Cold overnight dough, no kneading
Mixed until there is no dry flour, covered, into the fridge overnight. Cold fermentation is where the flavour comes from and it costs no effort at all.
2 — Oil the tray generously and stretch it cold
A quarter inch of oil in a rimmed sheet pan, dough pressed out towards the corners, rested ten minutes, pressed again. It will not reach the corners on the first try.
3 — Let it come up in the pan for two hours
Covered, at room temperature, until it has relaxed into all four corners and risen. Then dimple it all over with your fingertips.
4 — Sauce thin, cheese to the edges
Not much sauce. Cheese right up against the sides of the pan where it will fry into a crisp brown edge.
5 — Pepperoni on top of the cheese
Above, not below. Small cupping pepperoni curls up into little bowls of hot fat; buried under cheese it just steams.
6 — 500°F, 15 minutes, bottom third of the oven
The bottom rack puts the heat where the base is. Out when the cheese is blistered and the underside, lifted with a spatula, is brown.
7 — Basil whole, straight out of the oven
Laid on the hot pizza so the leaves wilt and go glossy without browning. Chilli flakes over.
pro tip — If you want basil under the cheese too, tear it and put it in, but keep the good whole leaves for the top. Baked basil is a different, duller thing.
8 — Cut in squares, avocado alongside
Straight out of the pan onto a board and cut in squares with a knife rather than a wheel. Avocado halved, peppered, salted, a squeeze of lime, served in the skin.
Home made pizza. Eat the avocado with a spoon between slices. LFG.