Sieve the APF and add salt, sugar, and yeast. Combine it nicely.
Now slowly add water (2 tbsps. at a time) and start mixing the dough to form a ball. If the dough is sticky, add more flour or if it’s too dry add more water.
Knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
Grease a big vessel with sufficient room for the dough to rise with olive oil.
Spread some oil on top of the dough too. Now wrap the bowl with cling film, and for a slow rise, you can keep it refrigerator for up to 8 or 9 hours and for the instant rise, you can keep it a warm place for about 2 hours or until it doubles up. I kept in my refrigerator.
Kneading
Once the dough has raised, remove the cling film and punch it down.
Knead it on lightly floured surface for 5 minutes to build the gluten content and to remove all the air pockets. (as you can see, kiddo helped me)
Rolling and Assembling Pizza
Dust the pizza stone with the corn meal or semolina.
Preheat the oven along with the pizza stone to 500 degrees F. If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can directly bake in the baking trays.
Dust the surface where you are going to the roll the pizza with flour and using a rolling pin or chapati rolling pin into a thin crust like below. If you prefer a thick crust, roll accordingly.
After rolling, let it sit for 15 minutes.
Then spread the pesto evenly and then the grated cheese, chopped mushrooms, and tomatoes. You can add in any order.
Now carefully, transfer this rolled pizza onto the hot pizza stone.
Reduce the oven temperature to 450-degree f.
Bake the pizza at 450 degrees F for about 8-10 mts till the crust turns golden brown, and cheese is all bubbly.
Carefully remove the pizza and serve hot.
Notes
You can choose your favorite topping. You can go for other cheese varieties, sun-dried tomatoes or veggies of your choice.
Roll the pizza according to your crust preference.
It’s not mandatory to place the dough in the refrigerator. During weekdays, I usually prepare the dough in the morning and put them in the fridge to rise. But you can keep them in a warm place and once the dough has doubled up, make sure you prepare the pizza within 2 hours if not refrigerate it.
As I used instant yeast, I didn’t proof it. If you are using active dry yeast, mix the yeast in the Luke warm water and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then use this mixture for preparing the dough.
Instead of APF, you can make the pizza base with wheat flour too.