2 bases of 150-150 gram each

So, to make your base, start with 250g of strong white flour, best of all the Italian Tipo 00 variety sold specially for pizza dough.

Mix it with 160ml of water, about 20ml of olive oil (Italian again!) and add 5g of fast-acting yeast and 5g of salt. Blend it all together and then knead it for five minutes.

The best food takes time – another inconvenient but vital detail – so try to leave the dough in a bowl to rise from morning to evening before you plan to use it. When you do, take the wonderful, risen cloud of dough and split it into 120g-150g balls. Again, if you’ve got time, you can leave them for up to three hours in a plastic bag to rise.

Next comes the show-stopping bit. Spread them out, first with your fingers and then with a rolling pin, into 6in or 7in circles until they are the same thickness all over. Now you’re going to throw them in the air, spinning them as they go to make sure the weight works its way out of the centre to the edges. Catch them not on your fingers – they’ll go through – but on your knuckles. You want the dough to be thinner in the middle and thicker on the edges.

Dust your pizza peel – the long-handled disc used for inserting and removing pizzas from the oven, which you can get easily online – with a 50-50 mix of semolina and flour. Semolina is grittier, makes the pizza slide better and adds an extra crispness.

Now add the topping.

If I’m doing this at home, I go for tomato passata, some olives and buffalo mozzarella. I also like to add a little bit of pouring cream, which blends very well with the mozzarella. Then sprinkle lightly with some dried oregano.

If you are using a wood-fired oven, two or three minutes should be enough. I like my pizzas slightly darker, with a crispier bite, but it’s down to individual taste.

If you are using a conventional oven – most of us probably aren’t yet quite up to depending on an outdoor oven like my beehives in Cyprus – put the dial up to maximum and make sure that it is fully heated before you start. That can take up to 15-20 minutes, so make sure you get the preparations right, or you’ll end up with a soggy bottom that tastes more like a cracker than a pizza.