Seeking for the perfect pizza recipe (in Finland)

Image by Aaron Landry via Flickr

(this is for Sotiris and Francesco)

In a struggle to find the perfect mix of flours here in Finland I managed to get close to something good with this recipe.

Ingredients

* 50% of Erikoisvehnäjauho
* 30% of Durum Vehnäjauho
* 20% of Hiivaleipäjauho

I usually make 1 Kg of dough I also put:
* 3/4 (0.75) of a glass of olive oil (extra virgin it's maybe better, don't use sunflower oil or similar in that case it's better without oil)
* 1 cube of fresh yeast (the standard hiiva from K-market or S-market), 2 cubes if you want to prepare the "high dough" (we call it Naples' pizza)
* 1 teaspoon of salt
* Some lukewarm water (I really never measured how much, the dough doesn't have to be sticky nor too dry, maybe 400/500 ml it's ok)

Preparation

Dissolve the yeast in a cup of water. (*** see update below)
Mix the three types of flour together with salt and olive oil.
Mix the yeasted water with the flour... and mix... and mix... and add other water until you get a compact, non sticky dough.
Roll it to obtain a ball.
Make it rise for 2 hours under a rag inside a big plastic bag (so that the moist stays inside and the dough doesn't dry).
Now you can split the dough in how many parts you want (I suggest 10 parts for the thin pizza and 5 parts if you want a thick pizza), make as many balls of dough and stretch the pizza with a rolling pin (or if you really want to try your luck with your hands making the dough fly in the air, but this is kind of Pro also for me :D ).

Topping
For the topping I use the tomato sauce that I find in Lidl and the ground mozzarella that is always there. Then some basilica and you have your "margherita" (not "margerita" or "margarita" as you often find in many restaurants around).

If you have more time and fantasy you can add Parma Ham or mushrooms or eggplants or zucchini or radicchio (here is called "punainen salaatti") or whatever you want.


UPDATE:
There is a small mod to the recipe that proved to be slightly better:

Change
* Dissolve the yeast in a cup of water
with:
* Dissolve the yeast in 3 spoons of lukewarm water and one teaspoon of sugar and wait until you see some foam (2/3 minutes usually) - The sugar helps a lot the rising process.

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PizzaMatic

Pizza technology reaches the next step in Finland. Not happy to have Koti Pizza and to have invented the Pizza Berlusconi now they put automatic pizza machines in the shopping malls.

Finland and pizza Berlusconi

Finland is still shocked by the words Berlusconi pronounced some year ago and knowing finnish they won't forget easily. Berlusconi didn't make compliments to Finnish cousine while the european food authority was at stake:

"I have been to Finland and I have had to endure Finnish food, so I am certainly competent to make comparison. Today Barroso can taste our culatello (local ham) instead of Finnish smoked herring."

As a surprise the other day walking down the street I was stunned by this ad:

It translates more or less as: "Kotipizza's Berlusconi elected best pizza in the world." [Kotipizza is the shop]
Now I don't know how this pizza tastes (and honestly I will never try it) but I'm not really sure this would really be the best pizza in the world... maybe is a classic finnish joke to make fun of their (and also mine) beloved Silvio :)