Pizza for Dummies with Fair Cape Dairies

Who doesn’t love pizza?  No, seriously – who doesn’t?

We love pizza so much, we made it our life mission to be able to make the perfect pizza at home.

A couple of months ago we bought a pizza stone, because Hubby was super keen to try to make our own pizza on the braai.  Well, to make a long and sad story as short as possible, we’ve had a few ‘challenges’ when it came to making our own pizza dough.  A LOT of uhm… challenges.

And some of the last attempts ended up in a pretty pricey pizza stone being chucked.  Yes, there you go – straight the garbage bin.  So you can imagine my anxiety when he announced that he is going to spend even MORE on this little contraption.

Honestly, I started to get panic attacks, sleepless nights, heart palpitations – questioning the meaning of life as we know it.  Oh the drama!!  You see, traditional pizza dough requires an irritating amount of kneading.  And well, we don’t knead.  Or I least, I can’t.  I promise, I will give it a fair try one day.  One day.

I used to be able to watch my Gran knead bread with pure hypnotic fascination.  It looked as if the palms of her hands and her fingers were detached from the rest of her body.  It just looked… complicated.  That is exactly where my deep rooted fear of working with yeast and anything that requires any amount of kneading comes in.  Give me the store-bought stuff.  Straight from Spar – so the only thing I need to do is to make sure that the dough doesn’t burst out of the bag.

Luckily, Hubby doesn’t scare easily.  And, to my horror, he was obviously ready to give this pizza making thing another go.

Mamma Mia!

Enters from left stage –  pizza dough for Dummies.  No, Hubby isn’t a dummy, but I am. I don’t handle failure gracefully, so I was determined – for his sake, that we get it right this time around.  Doing my part entailed staying out of the kitchen and making Google my best friend – and our saviour.

This isn’t an “original” recipe at all, this is probably the most popular pizza dough recipe on Pinterest and beyond.  Popular doesn’t mean it works though.  But like the Japanese say:  “Fall seven times, stand up eight”.  So here goes nothing.

What kind of recipe is this?  1 cup plain yogurt (used Fair Cape Dairies Double Cream of course) and 1 and 1/2 cup self-raising flour.

That is it.

Seriously.

Two ingredients. Two.

Mix together, and knead for a few minutes.

Yes, only a few minutes.  No weird contortionist moves, no numb shoulders, simply work the dough until both ingredients are mixed well and the dough is pliable.

That is the most difficult part of making this pizza.  Flatten the dough with your hands, no need to have a perfectly round shape pizza, you want it to look more ‘rustic’.  Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce, add ingredients of your choice and top with mozzarella or cheddar.

On this one we had our favourite pizza toppings – olives, anchovies and mozzarella.

Also, you can wing it without a special pizza oven or pizza stone, you can just pop it on a baking sheet, into a pre-heated oven, bake for about 15 – 20 minutes and voila!

No stress, no fuss.

It is important to use a full cream yogurt, like the Fair Cape Dairies one we used – fat free yogurt is too watery and just plain bleh anyway.

For more topping ideas – have a look  at my other half’s post on our blog www.socialsavage.co.za – read here:  https://socialsavage.co.za/2017/10/09/kitchen-at-the-end-of-the-universe-beer-and-pizza-the-perfect-couple/ where we hosted a couple of good friends for a beer-and-pizza pairing.

This pizza dough recipe is so easy, you simply whip up a new batch every time you’re ready for the next one.  A tip though, don’t make this pizza dough too long in advance, the pizza dough tends to get a little ‘sticky’ when leaving to stand for too long.

So, go ahead and try it!  Let me know what you think!  And also what your favourite homemade pizza topping is!

Thank you Fair Cape Dairies for supplying their products