What is considered a great pizza whether its takeaway pizza or homemade is really a matter of preference, but here are some tips on how to make your own:

First things first you have to make your dough, the measurements for ingredients can vary, but the basic ingredients usually stay the same. Basic Pizza dough ingredients are yeast, flour, sugar, salt, hot water and oil. Kneading the dough is important. It’s not just about mixing the ingredients together, but about preparing the dough to rise, it should be kneaded until entirely smooth. Once the dough has been made you need to let it rise by leaving it somewhere warm for an hour or so.

Ensure you pre-heat the oven so it’s nice and hot, an hour or so should do it. The oven realll needs to be at least set to gas mark 7. The base has to bake really fast. If the oven is not hot enough it won’t get all the moisture out of the crust, and it’ll end up being all soggy.

The best pizzas come out of wood-burning, clay-lined ovens. But for most of us, it is not possible to have such an oven in our home. So, for the home cook, the next best thing is to use a pizza stone. You can buy clay stones specifically designed for pizzas, or you can get unglazed floor or quarry tiles at your local home improvement store. Pizza stones are usually available in a varity of different shapes. If you find tiles that are rather small, you can set several next to each other to make a larger surface.

Once the dough has risen to need to roll out your crust whichever style you are going for you should always try to roll from the middle. If you put a piece of cornmeal dusted parchment paper on the back of a baking tray and roll you dough on will make life easier. You’ll have less trouble getting it in to the oven that way.

After you have rolled your crust it’s then time for the fun part and deciding on your toppings. Be judicious with toppings. A lot of thin crust pizzas simply can’t handle too many toppings. For an average 12″ pizza, about 1/2 cup of sauce is plenty. A cup of vegetables and meats, and 1 to 1-1/2 cups of cheese will make a good thin crust pizza.

Although fun and fairly easy to make sometimes it might be easier just to get a pizza delivery, you might not get that homemade taste or warm fuzzy when you sit down to eat it, but at least it does save on the washing up.

 For more information on pizzas and free advice on pizza delivery in Bristol visit pizzadeliverybristol