Hive Top Chef competition: Pizza

Good evening, friends!

Behold, I have accepted the Hive Top Chef competition launched by the #qurator community! And nothing better than the theme chosen for this week: Pizza! Ahaah Is there something more loved around the world than a beautiful Pizza? I don't think so... and we all know that the magic of this huge admiration and universal taste than a recipe that joins the best that bread has to offer, a fantastic and often very simple topping, but always with fresh and quality ingredients, to which allied to the simplest way to eat and taste that can be so simply without forks! Just this week we celebrate the day of "Bitcoin Pizza", and who doesn't get hungry just remembering how you started and why the celebration on 22 May! 13 years ago Laszlo Hanyecz paid Jeremy Sturdivant 10,000 BTC for two commercial pizzas... Crazy, isn't it? It is, but it was surely a first transaction that made cryptocurrencies and paying for simple everyday items one of the hottest and most controversial topics for some over all these years!

But let's get back to what brought us here today.

I'm going to share with you a genuine Italian recipe on how to make a Naples Style Pizza.
It all starts with the dough. It's prepared with simple, quality ingredients, and always with a lot of love in the mix. To have enough dough for about 8 medium pizzas we'll need:

• 500 grams of wheat flour,
• 40 grams of baker's yeast,
• 4 deciliters of lukewarm water,
• 4 tablespoons of virgin olive oil and
• salt as much as needed.

Crumble the yeast in the warm water and add a little flour to help the process. This mixture is set aside for about 10 minutes to allow it to rise. Sieve the remaining flour, and add the yeast, olive oil and salt. We can take it to the machine to knead, or if you prefer you can do it by hand (it's a process that being manual has no advantage in the final result, so I decided to use a baker's mixer to do it). After the dough is kneaded, take it out of the machine bowl and form a ball, which we leave to rest for about two hours in a bowl covered with a cloth and previously coated with flour.

At the end of the two hours, the dough has gained volume, and also a more elastic consistency, which is enhanced as we divide and work it to form approximately eight similar-sized balls. We reserve these eight balls with a thin coating of olive oil, in individual containers, so that it is easier to work on them later.

After the dough has been rolled and worked, it takes on an elastic consistency and a completely different sheen than before the tending process.

We stretch the dough out on a flour-filled countertop... and it's time to pour on a generous layer of tomato sauce, the real thing!

For the tomato sauce, the ingredients used could not be of lower quality... everything counts in this recipe. Its simplicity is inversely proportional to the love given in its confection and the concern to integrate only high quality ingredients.
We will use approximately

• 1.5 kilograms of ripe tomatoes,
• 2 medium onions,
• 6 cloves of garlic,
• two tablespoons of olive oil,
• a tablespoon of fresh oregano (preferably), and
• salt as much as needed.

Slice the onions and garlic cloves and saute them in a frying pan over medium or high heat. As soon as the onion starts to become transparent, and always careful not to burn the garlic, we add the tomatoes cut into pieces. We can add the water they released during the chopping process, if necessary to refresh the stew and to add layers of flavor. Bring to a boil and season with finely chopped fresh oregano and a pinch of salt if you need correction. Usually the salt is really necessary, because the tomatoes give a very sweet flavor, which we don't want to become too dominant. If you like, you can add 4 finely chopped, seedless chili peppers to give the sauce a little more zest. That's it! We have all the ingredients ready.

Now it's time for the magic!

A generous layer of tomato sauce is poured over the dough, and the toppings are always an act of creativity, but from a ham, mushroom, and mozzarella pizza, to chorizo and cheese, ham, mozzarella, and basil; or a simple Marguerita; burrata cheese and basil... or a simple ruculla and tomato cherrie, anything our imagination tells us can be put into practice!

Luckily, I was in a house where the owner had a wood oven suitable for baking bread and pizza. And you wonder why it is "proper"? Well, because the oven floor is made of a single stone, which gives it an even heat conduction, without running the risk of a big temperature loss when you put a pizza inside.

When the embers are already popping and the red hot exudes a contagious joy, it's time to place the pizzas inside. These take no more than only 4 to 5 minutes to bake, as the oven is at about 250 degrees centigrade.

Look at the beauty that these real Neapolitan pizzas emanate! Don't you just want to eat a slice... or two? ? Ahahah

I hope you enjoyed my first post in the Hive Top Chef competition🍕🍕.

See you next time!

Bem Hajam 🍀

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Photographic edition with PhotoScape X