veato's pizza base recipe

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Quick pizza base (8)
800g white flour (I use 00 when I have it but strong white is recommended)
200g fine semolina
14g instant (quick) yeast i.e. 2 x sachets
1tbsp caster sugar
650ml warm water
1 tablespoon salt.
Mix it, kneed it, let it rise for an hour, knock it back, make 8 balls, rest for 15 minutes, roll/stretch.
Can be kept in the fridge for the day after or frozen for use another day.

So I tried this recipe today, used a quarter of the amounts to make two bases. Made multiple mistakes.

Firstly, whilst I quartered the quantities for flour, water and semolina, I forgot to do it for the yeast, sugar and salt. Secondly, whilst I was able to get semolina, it was coarse rather than fine. Made two balls and left them to rise.

I took them out of the fridge but got caught up with other stuff so whilst the first ball rolled out okay, I couldn't transfer it to the pizza tray once I'd loaded the toppings on. Ended up making a calzone (brushing the dough with garlic butter) which was delicious. For the second ball, I returned it into the fridge and as soon as I rolled it out, I stuck it on the pizza tray. It looks okay. Just waiting for the missus to come home to try it.

Third attempt today (after yesterday's aborted plan due to power cut). We tried a stuffed crust cooked on a pizza tray (holes in base) and a plain one on a heavy baking tray. Brushed a little olive oil on the baking tray to prevent sticking. Didn't do this for the pizza tray one. Both cooked for same amount of time.

The pizza tray one - the base was a little undercooked in the centre. Thin'n'soft. The baking tray one was perfect. Crisp base.

Just need to get the seasoning and flavours right.

The missus and I made pizza today. Used veato's basic recipe but added in 2tbsp of milk powder. Heard it results in Pizza Hut style base. Mixed the yeast, sugar, salt and water first, let it proof before adding the bread flour/semolina/milk powder through a sieve.

The fail was when I asked the missus to thicken to pizza sauce (from a jar!) using tomato puree. For some reason, she added water to the contents of two jars. Consequently, there was water seeping out from the edges of cheese and the cheese hadn't really melted into the toppings.

The base itself was reminiscent of pizza hut but not quite there. Needs more garlic salt on the crust. But we did successfully make a stuffed crust.

the bases of the pizzas are still underdone compared to the top

Personally I don't use semolina in pizza, but that's a matter of preference.

A pizza stone really is the best thing you can use. If you put it into the oven when you first turn it on, everything should be properly hot after about 15 minutes.

try and get the base as thin as possible, none of this deep-pan nonsense.

I've experienced efforts where people have tried par-cooking the base first and they've always been universally awful, they seem to go tough and chewy.

Make sure you don't put too much stuff on top, otherwise that can also inhibit the cooking process.

I think a proper pizza oven gets up to somewhere in the 300 - 400C range (and probably nearer the upper end of that range) whereas most domestic ovens top out around the 250C mark so yeah, it's not going to be quite the same.

Frustratingly, it's not something that's easy to find out when looking online at ovens. You'd have thought it'd be obvious. Our electric oven maxes out at 230*C. I'd like to think when we update our kitchen and upgrade the oven that it'll be something that gets close to pizza oven temps. I know in terms of practicality (and swmbo) that this will be overridden.

Their website is rather cagey on the prices though so I suspect they aren't going to be cheap.