A positive spin on pizza!

Husband says that a portuguese pizza is an excuse to make a pizza of anything you have in the fridge. That's a (not entirely) lie! The fact is that he don't like a lot of the toppings. But he's actually no parameter!He likes basically no vegetables at all.

Every now and than I try to make him try something. I'm most sucessful when he doesn't know what he's eating. Sometimes I tell him afterwards. Sometimes he remains in oblivion... But a portuguese pizza is not something that remains in oblivion. The toppings are right there! And since husband is in a conference out of
town this week, I'm indulging myself with some pizza that I'm the only person in the house that likes it.

Portuguese pizza was created here in Brazil. There are different theories on it's name. Some say, that when the italian imigrants were still very few here, they needed some place to bake the pizzas, and used the bakery ovens to do so. And the bakery owners were portugueses, and naming the pizza of portuguese was the was they're way of saying "Thanks for the oven!".

Some also say that it's because of the colors, that are the same as Portugal flag, green, white and red (don't know about that, these are also the colors of Italy, Mexico, Hungary...). Well... the thing is, tastes awesome!

Everyone makes portuguese pizza it's own way. To me, what can't miss is: green pepper, one (our two) kind of meat, tomato, onions and hard boiled eggs.

Today I wanted to make a special twist on it. So I'm gonna go an extra mile on each topping.The dough is my basic dough to make any kind of pizza. My grandmother's neighbour is a very nice italian old lady. She taught me how to do it! It's as basic as it can get. Just flour, yeast, a little oil and water! There! Some awesome pizza dough, you can bake and freeze to have pizza to go!


Materials

Dough:

• 3 cups of all purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 30 g yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• salt
• water

Toppings:

• pizza sauce 
• grated mozzarela
• cherry tomatos
• onion
• ham
• salami
• green pepper
• red pepper
• hard boiled egg

Methods:

• Dissolves yeast in 1 cup of water, add sugar and mix well, let it grow.

• Sift flour and salt in a bowl.

• When leavening agent it's grown, add the oil and mix it well. Pour the mixture in the salted flour and mix well. Add more water and mix it, untill dough is hard and sticky like the picture.

• Remove a little ball of dough and put it in a cup of water. When the fermenting yeast releases CO2 enough for the dough to float, it's good to go!

• In the mean time, put two eggs to boil. 

• Spread olive oil in a griller and lay thick slices of onion and cherry tomatoes sliced lengthwise. Let it for a while, for they to lose water and get the grilled marks.

• Get the peppers and place them directly in the fire of the stovetop. Let it for a minute every side, untill the skin is charred. Remove the charred skin and slice.

• By this time, the dough has already grown. Turn the oven in 180 ºC, while you finish the pizza. Spread the dough with the oiled hand in an oiled pan. And assemble the topping as you want.Pour with some olive oil and into the oven.

• It's ready when the dough is fluffy and the cheese melted and it's bubbling

Experimental observations:

If you put two teaspoons of baking soda in the water of boiling the eggs, the shell will slide right off.

This pizza has a lot of vegetables, and when they cook, they release water. Cooking the vegetables before, will prevent the pizza from getting soggy.

While peeling the peppers, I leave a little bit of the charred skin. Gives a yummy burnt flavor.