‘Me and my kids love pizza’ – This is my vindication of baking a scrumptious pizza with loads of cheese toppings ever now and then.

After recipe trying a lot of the times I have come up with a pretty fool proof and very easy method of baking an almost perfect pizza and voila – here you go.

Ingredients For the dough:

• 1.25 cups of multi grain flour (or regular ata)
• 0.5 cup of white flour

(one can use 2 cups of white flour instead – but I was trying to incorporate whole wheat in the dough for the reasons I mentioned here)

• one packet of active dry yeast
• 2 table spoon oil
• I cup of water (warm)
• Salt to taste

The trick to making a perfect dough is activation of yeast, you would need to warm water to the degree that you can put your finger in and it doesn’t burn, the water should not be too hot because yeast is a living organism and can die by heat, but it shouldn’t be luke warm to not be activated in the first place. So you add the yeast in water, gently mix it and then let it sit for 5 minutes till it gets foamy like this:

Once its foamy its activated and will swell up your dough. Just mix in two flours, oil and kneed it with the yeast-water to the point it stops sticking to your hands.

Now cover it with a plastic sheet/wet tissue/wet cloth and put it near (and not ON) a burning stove for 30 minutes. If you are using only white flour it will more than double in size, but if you are using regular wheat flour as well, it will not swell up that much. But you shall be able to feel that it has risen. Give it a knead again and refrigerate it if you are not baking the pizza right away. (It stays well in the fridge for about 2-3 days and I froze it once and it was good after 2 or so week as well).

For the sauce:

• 1 cup Boneless chicken cut in cubes
• 1/2 packet Shan tikka/tandori masala
• 1 cup tomato paste (or just blend regular tomatoes)
• salt/black pepper/spices to taste
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2-3 tablespoons spring onion
• 2-3 tablespoon ball pepper
• mozzarella & cheddar cheese
• parsley/oregano for sprinkling
• oil

I drizzled Tandoori spice on chicken and let it sit for an hour. Then heat 1 tablespoon oil in the skillet and cooked the chicken on medium with lid closed for about 10 minutes and on high with lid open till the water evaporates.

in another pan I fried onions and garlic till the onions are caramelized then added spring onion and ball pepper and sautéed for some time and added tomato paste & spices. I stirred it till it thickened and kept it aside.

Then I just rolled out the dough, greased my pan and laid the dough on it flat. I spread the sauce and then dropped the chicken on top and let it cook for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

after 10 minutes, I took it out and sprinkled cheese on it and let it cook for another 12 minutes or till the cheese melted.

I split the cooking times because I didn’t want to burn my cheese. hmm! now that you know the secret – go ahead and bake pizzas to satiate all the cravings 😉

Farewell till thursday!