Feast your eyes on this
If you’re one for keeping resolutions to stay fit and go to the gym, then this post might not be for you. Otherwise, step right in for a meat and cheese feast extraordinaire.
Today we decided to make our own pizza, but I can’t claim any credit.. I “supervised” whilst Jak made the dough (read: I was updating the blog layout and messing around with CSS, it was like a complete role reversal). Anyway, I have to confess, bread is a relatively new area for me.. not something I’ve succeeded in in the past but there’s a few recipes I definitely want to try.
The pizza dough was pretty simple to make, this is enough for a medium sized pizza (approx. 8 slices).
- 200g strong white flour (you’ll want the strongest flour you can find, it has more gluten and makes it easier to stretch the dough)
- Pinch of salt
- 130ml lukewarm water
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp caster sugar
- 3g yeast
1. Sieve together flour and salt onto a clean surface, making a well in the centre.
2. Mix water, oil, sugar and yeast together in a separate jug, then pour into the well.
3. Using a fork, add the flour mix into the liquid mix, stirring together well. You might find it easier to use your hands instead of the fork when (inevitably) the liquid starts to escape the well.
4. Knead until you’ve got a springy, soft dough. At this point, place the dough into a floured bowl, dust with flour over the top and cover with clingfilm. Leave to double in size for about an hour in a warm place.
5. Once the hour’s up, you can liberally dust a clean work surface and start kneading the dough to knock out the air. Slowly start stretching the dough into a pizza-like shape and once you’re ready to add the toppings, place it onto a baking tray and remember to pre-heat the oven to 200.
It takes approx. 15 minutes to cook, but make sure you keep an eye on it to prevent it from burning (we did leave ours in a little too long).
For our pizza, we used tomato puree for the base, covered it in a mix of mozzarella and cheddar. Toppings included: onions, a variety of salami, parma ham, piquante peppers and finished off with some cheese in the form of Gruyere. I did warn you.. not the healthiest of toppings.. but given a choice, what would you choose? Gym .. or a really tasty homemade pizza (that costs a fraction of Domino’s)?
