In a bowl, combine 1.5 teaspoons of active yeast with ¾ cups of warm water and 1 teaspoon of sugar. Leave to hang out and mingle for ten minutes.

In a large bowl, mix to combine 2 cups of pizza flour (00 flour - or all purpose flour is fine too) and 1 teaspoon of salt .

Pour yeast mixture into the flour mixture with a few glugs of extra virgin olive oil. Form into a dough and knead for a good few minutes. Form into a ball and set bowl aside (covered with a damp tea-towel) to rise for 1 hour in a warm spot.

After 1 hour, knead again and let sit for another hour (if you have the time). If you're super hungry and feeling too impatient to re-knead, I've totally just rolled out my dough and dressed my pizza at this point - and if you're not type-A-pizza then you can go ahead and bake it!

San Marzano tomatoes, crushed up, with sea salt. You can find these canned at your grocery store, or a specialty Italian grocery.

Fresh balls of white mozzarella, sliced.

Basil leaves, torn and tossed right on.

Oven-dried cherry tomatoes. Set your oven to 325, slice cherry tomatoes in two and place on a parchment-paper covered baking sheet. Let dry for 1 hour in the oven (may as well do this while the pizza dough is rising!) These are so easy to make, and are total flavour blasts!

A sprinkle or some super-thin slices of salty parmigiano reggiano.

Arugula leaves, thrown right on top once the pizza comes out.

Toasted pine nuts! A total winner!

A typical pizza (duh) starts with tomatoes or tomato sauce (you can even use a can of store-bought pizza sauce), then throw on your toppings, and pop in the oven.

Place your pizza stone or pizza tile or pizza whatever in the oven. Blast the oven on to 500 degrees. Let stone heat up BIG TIME before you put your pizza on. Turn oven down to 425 when it's time to bake your pizza.

Easy tip: I roll out my pizza dough onto a sheet of parchment paper, which makes it super easy to transfer to the pizza stone - I just bake it on the paper too, on top of the stone. Still crisps up no problem.

Bake your pizza at 425 degrees (turned down from the inital 500 degrees) for 7-10 minutes, watching closely to ensure it doesn't burn.