Let it raise for at least 45 minutes, up to 1h30. It should be growing to almost the double of the size – so if you got a bowl of the “right” size than it should now be about half-full. Once the dough is reaching the rim, it’s quite ready. It’s quite OK if it grows above the rim, because of the towel it won’t fall out. (Unless you used some kind of super yeast!)

Now at first it might not look like it’s growing a lot, specially if your bowl is cold. Don’t worry, check back in 30 minutes.

Sometimes with me it doesn’t grow that much. I don’t know why this varies, but it could be the yeast is in a bad mood or something. Anyway it still grows some, like 50%, and I’ve found that it still turns out OK. The dough will always raise a tiny bit more in the oven.

Meanwhile, go and turn on your oven, turn it at 300 degrees Celcius or whatever is the maximum. Yes, really, to the max! It’s just going to be in there for a few minutes.  Don’t turn on the “Fan cleaning” function though, not that hot!

I’ve found that contrary to what the pros say, it works fine with the fan instead of that rectangle thingie (upper/lower heat), but don’t use the grill!Just make sure your oven actually heats – our oven for some reason have a few settings where there’s only the light on, I don’t understand why they have those, it’s quite annoying to find your oven cold when you are ready to stuff that pizza in..

This is a nice time slot for the chef to open that bottle of fine ale.

So let’s assume that some time has passed, you have had a look at the bowl and it has raised “some”. What you do next is to find some space, I believe a kitchen top would be perfect if it’s big, but in our house we just do it on the kitchen table. Make sure it’s clean (but not clean as with these anti-bacterial sprays they are making commercials about – I don’t want to eat that!) and dry – otherwise the flour would stick.

Wash and dry your hands as well.

Now you need to sprinkle some flour over your work area – this is to avoid your dough sticking to the table. Put some flour in your hands and rub them – the explanation is the same here – to avoid the dough
sticking to you.

Just hold the dough bowl upside down over the work area – if it’s perfect the dough will just fall out – but in some cases you get a stringy airy thingie left in the bowl – just scrape it out as well with your fingers.

Now kind of roll the dough around on the table, turning it now and then. It doesn’t matter if it’s a perfect ball – in fact in the end we want it to be more like a long, fat stripe.

Don’t squeeze the dough too much, not much lovely massaging this time, it would puff out the air we have waited for the yeast to produce. (In fact it’s carbon dioxide, like in a soda. The yeast also produces alcohol, but sadly this will just evaporate.)

Now we’ll need to split the dough into a good size for our base. If the dough is in a stripe, and as thick as a male fist, than you need about the length of that fist as well.  You don’t need to cut it using a knife, just tear it apart with your hands. Try to get even sizes, it’s more fun to have 2 big pizzas than 2 normal pizzas and one very tiny one, or 3 tiny ones (for 3 varieties)!

Work with one of the bases at a time, sprinkle a bit of flour on the table and on the dough, and use that baking roller thingie (what’s it called? Norway: “kjevle” – Mexico: “mau mau”).

If you don’t have one of those rollers – don’t despair – you may use the old student trick of finding an empty (or if you’re lucky: unopened) bottle of wine, wash the bottle with hot water, but don’t remove the label. (There’s glue underneath the paper, glue doesn’t taste good).

Make sure the roller is dry (specially if it’s a bottle), then sprinkle some flour on this again. I guess you know the drill by know – and yes – you may use some of that excess flour you already have on your table and probably most of your kitchen floor.

Now roll the dough out – it doesn’t matter too much about the shape as long as it will fit your baking tray. If you don’t have a flat baking tray, you can do like us, just cover a grill tray with aluminium foil, fold it around the edges. As we’ve used olive oil in our dough you generally don’t need any greasing as when you bake a cake – if anything just sprinkle a bit of flour on the tray.

For the actual rolling, now and then rotate the dough so that you’re stretching it in all directions. If it gets too thick in the edges – just rotate it again and roll it flat. If you get holes, that’s OK, you can take dough from the edges or another dough ball and patch it – just roll a few times to merge it. If you get too many holes or you make it too thin, just collapse it and start again. You can add a bit more dough from the unrolled balls, or just make the pizza smaller.

Turn the base and roll a few times on the other side as well – when lifting be careful so you don’t break it. If you’re lucky you’ll have a wonderful dough that’s easy to lift, however I don’t think it’s possible to do that spinning on the finger trick unless you had used the whole bottle of olive oil..

Now that pizza base is in a reasonable size and shape, even if it doesn’t look like a pizza shape, just put it on the tray, it will still taste delicious.

Here comes the choice of Italian or American style. If you want the flat Italian style, puncture the dough by stabbing it repeatedly with a fork. Again a chance to get out some aggression if the dough has not been cooperating with you, and also this avoids the dough blowing up like a pita in the oven.

If you want more like the American style, you don’t need to puncture it that much, and also you might want to roll up a bit thicker edges – for the Italian you don’t need a special edge at all. If you do the edges, just push them down a bit on the inside so they’ll stay.

Pop it in the oven, for about 3 minutes or so. It should be in the middle of the oven, or at about 60% from the bottom. (I don’t say “middle shelf” – as some ovens have the top shelf in the middle of the oven!). You’ll probably see it raise. If it raises like a balloon, you should take it out, otherwise the upper crust is going to be very crunchy and break like a cracker.

Otherwise, you’ll need to take it out just as it has got some colour, and before it gets too hard. It should now be like a nan bread – just not as thick and without the garlic.

In fact, if you would like to do your own rolled nan kebab (no: “rullekebab”), this is the bread you need.

Now you have the pizza base out, you’ll pop in your next one. Oh, you didn’t start rolling it out in those three minutes? This is when the production line is rolling and you need the extra manpower!

Let the base rest for a bit on a flat surface, then fill it with your pizza sauce (how to make the sauce can be another post, if you don’t want to wait, you can just use some ready made pizza sauce from the shops).

You don’t need that thick layer, and it’s OK if there’s patches uncovered. Try to cover out on towards the edges though, to avoid the pizza getting too dry. Now for the cheese – sprinkle grated cheddar and other lovely cheese all over (like that goat cheese!) – it’s not to be a thick layer like on a bad school dinner, just some big dots all over, about a handful or two.

The cheese goes underneath the rest of the filling, so that the filling can get baked as well. The classical Norwegian “Saturday pizza” on the other hand is to fill the thick pizza dough (without the pre-baking first) with this kind of bolognese sauce of mince and onion – champion mushrooms from a tin if you’re exotic, and then covering it like with a lid using loads of very bad, tasteless and rubber-like cheese, in Norway marketed under the describing name “Gulost” (“yellow cheese”). This technique doesn’t work well with the kind of pizzas we’re baking here – as the filling is generally uncooked and needs to be exposed to the hot oven.

Fill the pizza with slices and stripes of your favourite vegetables, for the meat eater pizza (as you have several pizzas in the making) you can also add any kind of meat, last time we used a nice 21-days aged rump steak cut in stripes and quickly fried with salt and pepper (this is good with peppers and mushrooms), but you could also use slices of pepperoni (good with everything, in particular sliced black olives), ham (good with mushroom and pineapple), and so on. Chicken on the other hand tend to taste little on pizza, unless you have first marinated it in a Nando sauce or something.

I’m still surprised by how little vegetables is needed, I always end up cutting too much. You don’t need to fully cover the pizza, don’t stack the veggies, and leave some room for pieces of cheese to melt. Use thin slices – in particular for wet vegetables like tomatoes.

Again just pop the whole thing into the oven, again in the middle, this time it probably needs 4-5 minutes depending on how much stuff you have, check back often! It’s finished if the cheese is melted and looks fine, and/or if the edge of the pizza looks/feels like it’s getting a bit crunchy.

Take it out, let it rest for a bit while you pop the next one in, try to vary the filling so you’ll get different pizzas, like 3-4 different things on each is a nice.

Slice the pizza and dig in! You’ll have some running back and forth to pick up the remaining pizzas, but that’s part of the fun for the diners as well, as the surprises will just keep coming!

If you have one of those fan ovens you can cheat and put the pizza down to the lower shelf for its last minute while the new one sneaks in on the top – but don’t forget it – it’s almost done!

Now, enjoy your pizzas!

The trick about the hot oven and the pre-baking I learned from various pizza parties with my friends Lasse and Jenny in Trondheim, and the trick about the olive oil in the dough Ove and I got simply by asking a pizza baker “How do you make the dough so smooth” one night we were drunk and ordering some take away.