pizza margarita

Hi Everyone!

Well, I must confess…..my husband and I are on a mission to use the most healthiest ingredients possible when cooking. Due to a family member’s current battle with cancer, we started educating ourselves regarding how food is formulated, processed, and sold as well as how it how affects our body. A lot of the documentation we’ve read is scary enough. Not that it isn’t public knowledge how processed food is absolutely terrible for you. However, there are basic food items that do not process well in the body. While I won’t get into all that, I do encourage you do educate yourself on what you eat and drink. It affects your health and the health of your family. Having said that, my husband and I recently switched to organic hard wheat flour. Here in Italy, it’s called “farina integrale biologico”.  It’s absolutely delicious! I now bake my bread with this flour as well as make pizza with it. Knowing that hard wheat doesn’t rise like other types of flour (if it’s truly hard wheat), the secret to making this pizza crust soft is to add plenty of water when making the dough….it’s almost the same of my rustic bread recipe on how to make the dough….but I omit the yogurt and substitute the flour listed in that recipe for whole wheat flour). This pizza, a take on the classic pizza margherita, is super fast to make and soooo delicious. So let’s begin!

Maestro, the ingredients please!…….

For the dough:

-500 grams (1 pound) of organic whole wheat flour….read your flour label carefully for mixed flours or fillers!

-1 pkg of instant yeast

-WARM water

-2 tbsps of olive oil

-Salt, to taste

Mix by hand until you get an almost liquidy consistency. Cover and let rise for about 2 hours.

For the pizza:

-1 medium jar of tomato sauce (or you can make your own here) If you want plain tomato sauce, just omit all the additional ingredients I listed in that recipe.

– 8 to 10 fresh basil leaves

– 4 pieces of garlic, sliced.

– Fresh mozzarella cheese  (quartered, sliced, or however you like)

– Olive oil

– Salt, to taste

Now here is how we do it…..

Using a spoon, place huge dollops  of the dough all over a baking tray covered with oven paper. Spread the dough using the back end of the spoon so that it evenly covers the tray (not too thick, though). Mix a bit of olive oil in the tomato sauce and spread it oven the dough. Add the cheese and fresh basil. Drizzle some more olive oil all over the pizza and bake in a preheated oven at 200°C \ 400°F for 15-25 minutes (depending on your oven). Delizioso!

pizza margherita

Buon Appetito!

Wanita =)

For delicious authentic Sicilian recipes, be sure to check out my new eBook “Cucina Siciliana” filled with lots of truly authentic recipes given to me by family and friends here in Sicily….it’s only 99 cents!

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