General guide to all things home-made pizza. Yes it's messy, yes it's immense fun, yes it has to be planned a little in advance and yes it tastes much better than anything else so it should be done as often as possible.

The flour.

Despite being a massive fan of very high grade flour pasta, I'm actually the opposite with pizza flour. Forget the need for obscure brands of 00 flour that cost five pounds for a small bag, with pizza any kind of hard flour will work. I struggle to tell any difference between any of the supermarkets own brand hard flours for pizza, so just buy whatever you find.

The stone.

Worth getting one. Baking trays will do, but to cook pizza well you need something that not only is large enough to take the pizza, but also something that will hold its heat when the pizza hits it at first – something a baking tray simply does not do. Any brand of pizza stone will do, or even just a slab of marble or other oven safe smooth stone. I throw it in and turn the oven on about half an hour before I want to put the pizzas in, and it is always fine given this sort of time to heat.

The passata.

Just like the flour, I'm actually pretty lax with tomatoes here. Any sieved tomatoes will do. Selection of pestos work well too.

The cheese.

Just buy good quality full fat mozzarella balls. Some use processed forms because if wrongly prepared mozzarella balls can stream liquid onto the pizza and make the sauce and base watery and non crisp, but they miss out on the best flavour. The way to avoid the wateryness is to simply crumble the cheese very finely over the pizza – a little annoying and time consuming but more than worth it for the end flavour.

The toppings.

Whatever you want in any combination you feel. Add Parma ham late or it will crisp too much and go nasty, but pretty much everything else you should put on at the start. Place toppings on after the passata but before the cheese.

The dough.

Either in a very large saucepan, on a big chopping board or simply on a clean table, pour a load of flour on the table. I generally allocate around a tennis sized ball of flour per person, but this is more than enough, and you will always have leftovers which can either be fridged for a few days or frozen. The dough also makes lovely bread/dough balls if just baked so always make more than you need for a given meal.

Boil a kettle, and fill a mug with 1 part boiling water to two parts cold. Depending on what kind of yeast you are using either add it to the water then and leave to sit according to instructions, or if using ready to bake yeast simply add it the flour.

Make a well in the centre of the dough, and slowly add steadily water until the flour starts to form a dough. It always goes too wet at first so have some extra flour ready to dry it out a bit. Add a good slug of olive oil and a generous pinch of salt. Knead for a while until it is a texture that is pliable and easy to knead, but not so wet that it sticks. Put in a lightly oiled container and cover. Leave this to rise somewhere warm for an hour or so.

After it has risen, take it out, squash the air out of it and knead again for a little while, again adding a little extra flour if it seems too wet.

Wrap and chill/freeze for as long as you want.

Making the base.

Forget bizarre Italians spinning things. For each base take a lump of dough a bit bigger than a golf ball per pizza (a billiard ball is probably the right size, but suggesting referencing sizes from houses of ill-repute may bring concerned looks in certain circles). Pull gently into a circle and flatten with the palm of your hand. Pick up and just gently stretch in all directions. Any small areas of thick dough simply flatten with thumb and forefinger and keep stretching. Plug any holes with small bits of dough from the main blob

Get into any shape you want (I currently like vague triangle shapes but anything you like is fine).

Lay on a piece of baking parchment. The parchment is crucial as it means you can get the base very thin and still easily onto the hot stone without the need for a huge pizza spade.

Add all your toppings, put the finely crumbled cheese on, sprinkle with pepper and maybe a drizzle of olive oil. Now ready for the oven.

Cooking.

Heat the oven to its highest setting with the stone/tray inside. Remove the stone and put it on the hob. Take the parchment with the pizza on and drop on the stone. Quickly return the stone to the oven. Check on it after five minutes and then every few minutes to see how it is doing. Pizza can burn very quickly so be on the ball or face blackened pizza for dinner.

It is ready when the cheese is golden and the base starts to blister. Eat with gusto.