A yeast dough left to rise for forty minutes, divided into four, and topped with a cooked tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni and basil. Makes four pizzas, and the rising is most of the time.
Where the time actually goes
The card used to say fifty minutes. The dough alone rests for forty of them, and that was not counted anywhere.
Realistically this is an hour and a half from start to table: fifteen minutes of mixing and kneading, forty of rising, fifteen of sauce made while you wait, and twenty in the oven. Almost none of it is work.
The recipe is right that longer rising is better. Forty minutes is the minimum for the yeast to do anything useful, and a dough given two hours rolls out without fighting back.
The sauce is cooked and then cooled
Two cups of ketchup, garlic sautéed in oil, salt, cumin, oregano and a teaspoon of sugar, simmered for fifteen minutes.
Cooking it matters. Ketchup straight from the bottle is sharp and thin and tastes of vinegar on a pizza; fifteen minutes over heat drives some of that off and thickens what is left into something that will sit on dough instead of running through it.
Then it has to cool. Warm sauce spread on raw dough soaks in while you are arranging the pepperoni, and the base is already wet before it sees the oven.
Prick the base
A fork, all over, once the round is on the tray. It looks like a decorative step and it is not.
Trapped steam under a rolling pizza base lifts the middle into a dome as it bakes, and everything on top slides off the sides. The holes give the steam somewhere to go and the base stays flat.
Toppings are not sauce ingredients
The ingredient list on this page had the mozzarella, the pepperoni and the basil filed under For the sauce, which is where anyone reading by section would have put them: into the pot with the ketchup.
They go on top of the dough after the sauce, which is what the seventh step says. They now have a section of their own.
More things with dough
- Cauliflower pizza base — no flour at all.
- Homemade bread — the same yeast, a different shape.
- Cheese bread — pandebono, no rising needed.
- Béchamel sauce — the white pizza route.
Homemade Pizza FAQ
Forty minutes at minimum, and the recipe says the longer the better. An hour or two gives a dough that stretches under the rolling pin instead of springing back at you.
To let steam escape while it bakes. Without it the middle of the base puffs into a dome and pushes the sauce and cheese out to the edge.
That is what this recipe uses: two cups of it, cooked for fifteen minutes with garlic, oregano, cumin and sugar. It is a Colombian home-kitchen shortcut rather than an Italian method, and the cooking is what turns it into something sauce-like.
Because hot sauce soaks straight into raw dough while you are still assembling, and the base ends up soggy before it reaches the oven.
Four. The dough is divided into four equal pieces after rising and each is rolled into its own round.
Fifteen to twenty minutes at 180°C, which is 350°F. That is lower and longer than a pizzeria oven, which is why the base comes out closer to bread than to a thin crisp crust.
Yes. A longer rise improves it, and dough that has rested in the fridge overnight is easier to roll out than dough that has had forty minutes on the counter.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
For the dough
- 750 g flour
- 1 sachet of yeast
- 2 cups warm water (added little by little)
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
For the sauce
- 2 cups ketchup
- 2 cloves garlic (minced)
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- Dried oregano
- Cumin (to taste)
- Salt (to taste)
On top
- Mozzarella cheese
- Pepperoni
- Basil
Notas
Instructions
- Make the dough. In a bowl, put the flour, the yeast, the salt, the sugar and the oil. Mix it all well and add the water little by little. Knead until you have a soft dough.
- Let it rest for about 40 minutes. The longer the dough rests, the better it gets.
- While the dough is resting, make the sauce. Heat the oil in a pot and sauté the garlic. Add the ketchup, salt to taste, the cumin, the oregano and the sugar.
- Cook for about 15 minutes, take it off the heat and let it cool.
- When the dough has rested, cut it into four equal pieces. On a floured surface, roll each piece out into a round with a rolling pin.
- Lay each round on a pizza tray and prick the dough all over with a fork.
- Spread the sauce over the dough and add the mozzarella, the pepperoni and the basil to taste.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 180°C (350°F).
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