Pizza Time: Margharita madness! The dough and the sauce.

Hehe, more Heston madness.

For the dough, have 500g (about a pound) of flour, I used all-purpose, but there is probably some super dough with exactly 12% protein content. Don't know, don't care. Flour is flour to me.

Mix with water in a water-to-flour 17:30 ratio (hey do the math!)
If you are really nuts, you can prepare 1/3 of the dough 12 hours ahead of time, if you can tell the difference, let me know.



[OK, OK.
For the pre: 1/3 = 167g flour, 17/30 = 95g water.
For the final: 2/3 = 333g flour, 17/30 = 189g water.
Jeez.
]
Divide the dough into 5 equal balls and let rest out of the fridge for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, take half of your peeled tomatoes, cut nearly in half, and squeeze out the juice into a largish stainless steel pot. You are going to boil them to a mush, so no need to be gentle. If the tomatoes came on the vine, put the vines in too - more flavor apparently.
Careful with tomatoes - they are very acidic - so don't put them in a copper pan unless you like the taste of copper and no pan.
Bring to a boil, set to a very low heat, and simmer for ages. Two hours or more. Be sure to stir frequently so the bottom layer doesn't burn. You want a soft mush like thick spaghetti sauce. Alternatively, buy a jar of spaghetti sauce and use that.

Take one ball of dough. Using your hands flatten it out into a perfect circle. If you want to throw it spinning into the air be my guest, I just flattened it out. The dough will be as perfectly circular as you are a perfect person, so try hard.

Take a spoon, or better a ladle, and put some sauce on the dough. Use the back side of the ladle to squish the sauce nearly, but not quite, to the edges of the circle.

Your pizza base is now prepared!

I can't wait for Heston Blumenthal's next offering:
Further Adventures in Search of Perfection and I've decided to splurge on:
The Big Fat Duck Cookbook.

The latter isn't coming out until November of this year, and at $150+ I will need all of that time to save my pennies. I'm going to get a 5% discount for pre-ordering, which counts for a lot at this price!

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