Can you make good pizza at home without a pizza oven? Joe, Preston, Lancashire Yes, but it’s more a question of which style of pizza you’re going to have the most success with. “The biggest thing is the temperature of the oven,” says Rich Baker, co-owner of Flat Earth Pizzas in east London, “because domestic ovens simply aren’t hot enough to achieve what a pizzeria does.” Joe might, he suggests, fare better with a grandma pizza, which is cooked in an oiled baking tray for about 15 minutes – “It’s ideal for the oven,” he says. But if you’re hankering for a floppy Neapolitan or crisper, New York-style slice, construct it in a hot cast-iron frying pan, then, once it has some colour on the base, pop it under a high grill until bubbling. “That’s the method I use if I don’t have access to a pizza oven,” says Nick Buckland, co-owner of Yard Sale Pizza in London, which opens its tenth site in Tottenham next month. You’ll also need a good basic dough recipe, which happily requires only a handful of ingredients – flour, water, yeast, salt – although, Baker adds, you could also include sugar, honey or olive oil “to help it brown better”. Flour-wise, Joshua Ward, co-founder of Palm’s Pizzeria in Margate, uses 00 for his New York-style slices: “You want a fairly high protein content, because it helps build the dough’s structure, meaning it won’t tear when you handle it”; you could also use strong white flour, a mix of the two, or even add a little rye. Buckland also goes for 00 with “at least 13g protein” and, for three 12-inch pizzas, mixes 500g with 270ml water, and 1g fresh yeast (or ½g dry, active yeast in a little tepid water). He then adds 30ml more water, followed by 15g salt and 15g extra-virgin olive oil, and mixes for about 10 minutes, until it forms a smooth, elastic dough. “Fold into a ball, put in a lightly greased bowl, cover and leave overnight” at about 18C : “That’s the perfect spot between letting the yeast do its thing, but without it happening too quickly.” Once it has doubled in size, Buckland divides the dough into three roughly 260g pieces, shapes them into tight balls, places on a tray and leaves again for a few hours to double in size once more. And that’s the thing: good dough takes time: “The longer you leave it to mature, the better the results,” he says. (If you’re going for a grandma-style pizza, he adjusts the dough slightly: “The basic recipe is about 60% hydration [the water-to-flour ratio], but for a traybake pizza, you want to push that up to 80-90%. That way, the pizza will stay fluffy and you’ll get those all-important bubbles”.) On to the stretching, which Buckland does on a flat, cold surface dusted with semolina (for added texture). “Press down the middle of the dough ball with your fingertips and work your way to the edge, leaving a 2cm border.” If you’re feeling confident, pick it up and “gently open out over the back of your knuckles – let gravity do most of the work”. Toppings are deeply personal, but the sauce, Buckland says, requires tinned tomatoes with “a high tomato content and less juice”, plus basil and salt, while Baker might get creative with a butternut squash or caramelised onion number. “Work the sauce away from the middle with the back of a ladle in a circular motion,” leaving “two fingers-width worth” of uncovered dough all around the edge, Ward says. You could, of course, ditch the red sauce altogether; Nancy Silverton, in her The Mozza Cookbook, spreads whipped heavy cream (yes, really) over the base, then adds cooked fennel sausage, red and spring onions, and mozzarella. Alternatively, garnish your pizza post-cooking: “Cured meats work well, as do hot honey or crisp onions,” says Tommy Tullis, co-founder of Nole in Salisbury. And here less really is more: “Don’t take the fun out of it,” Tullis adds, “but pizza works best when using fewer but better-quality ingredients.”