Thin-crust pizza

I’ve been craving fast food, but I can’t eat food from out these days, so I had to turn to the next best thing: Homemade pizza. Now, I’m not one of those people who sees the homemade version as entirely better, simply because of this: You may be able to make it tastier and healthier and more to your liking, but the effort of cooking and cleaning doesn’t compare to ordering food and having it brought to your doorstep all cooked and ready to eat. And the only cleaning up you have to do is throw away whatever packaging the food came in.

But this doesn’t mean I don’t make pizza at home. I do. But I always end up with a thick crust, doughy pizza. Last night, however, I made some good decisions and ended up with the kind of pizza my mother keeps hoping I would make. So here goes.

For the dough, I mixed 1 cup wheat flour with 1/2 cup pea protein powder (I’m on a high protein diet), along with 1 teaspoon yeast and 1-ish teaspoon sugar. I mixed that a bit and added 1 teaspoon salt and mixed it up again. To this, I added a teaspoon of roasted garlic butter, around 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, and enough water to make it a soft-ish ball.

Then I kneaded it for a few minutes and let it rest for around 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I shredded some pressure-cooked chicken.

I melted some butter in a saucepan and added the chicken. I added some salt, pepper and chili powder. Then I added some sun-dried tomato paste as well as some regular tomato paste, and enough milk to make it sort of a wet chicken mix as opposed to a proper gravy/sauce.

I chopped up some onion, garlic, capsicum, tomato, and green chili and set it aside. I cut the onion into big-ish chunks, which adds a nice crunch to the pizza. I also grated my cheese.

I then flattened my dough so that it was around 0.5 cm in height. The dough was the perfect amount for the pan I used (a 12" round pan). After transferring the dough to the pan, I flattened it and shaped it up so it more or less covered the bottom entirely.

I let this sit for a few minutes while I got the toppings ready.

First, I added a tiny amount of vegetable oil on to the flattened dough, especially the edges. Then I added the chicken and spread the sauce as close the edges as I could. I added the cheese. On top of the cheese went the veggies. I sort of flattened the top a bit with my hand, and then let the whole thing be for ten minutes, before baking it for around 20 minutes at 180C.

You want the cheese to be golden-ish and have the tops of some of the onions a bit burnt.

Now, I thought the bread might be a bit tough to eat because I didn’t let it rise, but it was perfect. It wasn’t bready and didn’t soak up all the sauce, making it soggy. You could cut a slice and enjoy it the way you would any other pizza. A success, in my kitchen!