Gennaro's Pizza or Italian Pizza

In a glass or a bowl, dissolve the yeast in warm (not hot!) water. 

Leave it to prove for 5 minutes.

In a bigger bowl transfer the flour and the salt. 

Then add here the yeast mixture. 

Stir well, first, using a spatula or a spoon, until they blend. 

Then transfer this dough on the table and continue to knead it with your hands - stretch it on the table, then pull it towards you and so on. 

Preferably, don't use more flour when kneading. Even though it's sticky in the beginning, the dough will get more and more elastic and firm, that's how gluten develops.

This is what it should look like when you've finished - I find this process very relaxing and I prefer to knead it with my hands. You can as well use a stand mixer. 

Now divide it in 4 equal parts. 

Make 4 balls and set them on a plate or even on the table after you've dusted it with some flour (or with some semolina, which will make the pizza base more crunchy).

Grease them with some olive oil, cover them in plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and leave them to rest. 

After 2 hours, the dough will look like this. It's time to stretch and bake the pizza.

Inside the oven set the oven tray upside down and pre-heat it to 250 degrees C.

This is going to be an improvised wood fired oven, the tray will heat up and so the pizza will cook much faster on it. 

Maybe I will get a pizza stone in the future, I just need to take care of this.

While the oven is heating, we stretch the pizza dough. 

Carefully take each ball of dough, one at a time, dust the table with flour and use your hands to press the ball until it flattens. You don't have to knead it anymore, you just need to press it gently with your fingers and stretch it as evenly as possible. 

Make sure you don't incorporate the semolina in the dough, so try to keep it on the outside, this will be the pizza base. 

Then stretch the dough softly with your hands and shape it in a thin pizza base - there are plenty of Youtube tutorials showing you how to do it best, but you will notice that each one is doing it in its particular way. 

Carefully move the thin pizza base on some parchment paper and adjust its shape. If you dust enough flour underneath, you will be able to work it well without much effort. 

Put the tomato sauce on the pizza - I use canned homemade "Sosul Marinara". 

Sprinkle Mozzarella or yellow cheese. 

Top the pizza however you like - here I used ham, olives and mushrooms - Pizza Capriciosa. 

Oven is heated and pizza is set. 

Take a different baking pan and turn it upside down (or you can use a big pizza spatula, if you have). Carefully pull the parchment paper to move the pizza on it.

Now in the same way, pull the paper to move the pizza on the upside down baking pan inside the oven. 

The moving of the paper is just a trick to substitute the skills of a real pizzaiolo :) 

Bake the pizza for 10-12 minutes at 250 degrees C (no ventilation). 

Even if it doesn't turn to brown on the edges, it is ready. Keeping it in the oven for more would mean drying it too much.

Remove it from the oven by pulling the paper and let it cool on a pizza plate. 

It's absolutely delicious, we enjoy it every single time - crispy, thin and flexible, just like an authentic Italian pizza. 

Enjoy!