makes 10

When I took my students to Italy to see how olive oil was made, we ate these "fried" pizzas at a great little restaurant called Il Vescovino in Panzano in the Chianti region. The chef fried the thin bases in oil, like poppadoms, then quickly topped them with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and a little bit of oregano and popped them straight under a hot grill. They were the lightest pizzas I've ever eaten—just incredible—and this is how the first ever pizzas were made.

1 basic pizza dough (see below)
flour, for dusting
vegetable oil, for frying
2 5-oz. balls of buffalo mozzarella
optional: 5 teaspoons dried oregano

for the tomato sauce
extra virgin olive oil
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
a bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked
1 14-oz. can of good-quality plum tomatoes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, make your basic pizza dough. While it's resting, make your tomato sauce. Heat a saucepan, add a splash of oil and the sliced garlic and cook gently. When the garlic has turned light golden, add half the basil, the tomatoes, and a few pinches of salt and pepper. Cook gently for about 20 minutes, mashing the tomatoes until smooth, then taste, season again, and put to one side.

Preheat your grill or broiler to its highest temperature. Divide the dough into 10 pieces and press them flat onto a floured work surface. Roll them out to about ¼ inch thick and allow them to rest for 10 minutes or so. Heat a frying pan over a high heat, add about ¾ inch of vegetable oil and fry each pizza for 30 seconds or so on each side. Remove with tongs and place on a baking tray.

Once all the bases are fried, smear each one with a spoonful of the tomato sauce and tear over some mozzarella and a leaf or two of basil or dried oregano. Drizzle with olive oil and grill until the cheese is bubbling and the dough is light brown and cooked through.

Pasta Per Pizza
Basic Pizza Dough
makes 6–8 medium-sized thin pizza bases

This is a really simple method for pizza dough. If you can find semolina flour, it gives the dough an authentic flavor and texture.

1 ¾ lb. strong white bread flour
1 ½ cups fine ground semolina flour or strong white bread flour
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
¼ oz. envelope active dried yeast
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
just over 2 cups lukewarm water

Pile the flours and salt onto a clean surface and make a 7-inch well in the center. Add your yeast and sugar to the lukewarm water, mix up with a fork and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork and a circular movement, slowly bring in the flour from the inner edge of the well and mix into the water. It will look like stodgy porridge—continue to mix, bringing in all the flour. When the dough comes together and becomes too hard to mix with your fork, flour your hands and begin to pat it into a ball. Knead the dough by rolling it backward and forward, using your left hand to stretch the dough toward you and your right hand to push the dough away from you at the same time. Repeat this for 10 minutes, until you have a smooth, springy, soft dough.

Flour the top of your dough, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rest for at least 15 minutes at room temperature. This will make it easier to roll it thinly. Now divide the dough into as many balls as you want to make pizzas, i.e. lots of small ones or a few larger ones, but I suggest that 6 is a good quantity for this amount of dough.

Timing-wise it's nice to roll the pizzas out 15 to 30 minutes before you start to cook them. If you want to work more in advance, it's better to keep the dough wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge rather than having rolled-out pizzas hanging around for a few hours. Take a piece of the dough, dust your surface and the dough with a little flour or semolina, and roll it out into a rough circle about ½ inch thick. Tear off an appropriately sized piece of aluminum foil, rub it with olive oil, dust it well with flour or semolina, and place the pizza base on top. Continue doing the same with the other pieces and then, if you dust them with a little flour, you can pile them up into a stack, cover them with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge.

When you're ready to cook them, preheat your oven to 500°F. At this stage you can apply your toppings. Remember: less is more. If you can, cook the pizzas on a piece of granite or marble in your conventional oven—if not, do them one by one on the bars of the oven shelf toward the bottom of the oven. (If you're going to cook your pizzas on the bars of the oven, make sure they're not too big—otherwise they'll be difficult to maneuver.) Cook for 7 to 10 minutes, until the pizzas are golden and crispy.

Copyright © 2006 by Jamie Oliver. Photographs © 2006 David Loftus. Additional photographs by Chris Terry and Peter Begg © 2006. Reprinted with permission of Hyperion.