Pizza is a popular almost all over the world dish of Italian cuisine with a characteristic rounded appearance and a classic recipe with tomatoes and melted cheese. All possible and sometimes very unexpected ingredients are added to it, in accordance with their tastes. But how and at what temperature should this Italian dish be cooked?
A little about pizza
The first pizza, or, more precisely, the dish that is its prototype, was prepared by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who baked individual food items on slices of bread. After American tomatoes were imported to European countries in 1522, the inhabitants of Naples, Italy, invented the famous pizza.
In Naples, this dish was prepared by special people of the chef's profession - pizzaiolo ("pizzaiolo").
The dish, which appeared precisely thanks to American vegetable growing, spread to the United States only at the end of the second half of the 19th century in Chicago. And already in 1957, the country's food enterprises launched the production of the first semi-finished pizza products.
The classic recipe for pizza dough includes a mixture of ordinary flour and so-called durum flour ("durum", made only from durum wheat), as well as yeast, olive oil, salt and water. After combining all the ingredients, the pizza maker kneads the dough by hand and rolls it out to a thickness of half a centimeter. Then the dough is covered with tomato paste, on which any filling is already laid out.
Traditionally, pizza should be baked in a wood-fired oven, but the modern food industry allows the use of hearth and conveyor units. Housewives, including those in Russia, have also been preparing pizza in their own way for a long time, sometimes with a combination of a purely Russian set of food products.
Temperature required to bake pizza
The time and temperature for cooking this dish directly depend on the pizza recipe, its ingredients, baking place and desired roastiness.
For example, if you are cooking pizza in your home oven, the deciding factor is whether the filling is on the dough right away or is placed on top of the dough after baking until half cooked.
If you want to bake pizza with a little quick-topping, you need a temperature of 200 ° C and a time of 14-16 minutes. During this time period, the dish will acquire the desired golden crust.
The "Florence" type pizza with eggs baked on the surface of the dish is prepared in almost the same way. She also needs 200 ° C, but different time intervals - first 10 minutes, and then, after adding the eggs, another 8 minutes.
A high temperature, but at the same time, is necessary for baking the "4 seasons" pizza variety, which is characterized by a large amount of filling - about 300 ° C and 13-15 minutes of preparation.
If you decide to make a quick pizza in a frying pan, just place it in a bowl and close the lid. In this case, of course, it is difficult to determine the exact temperature, so you just need to turn down the power of the fire to the minimum. The readiness of the dough is determined with a toothpick: if it is dry, then the pizza is ready.
