Saturday, March 28, 2015

Momma mia, pizzeria!

For me, Friday night is the best part of the weekend...okay not the BEST part but it is pretty darn good. It is full of hope and promise of long mornings laying in bed for as long as humanly possible, using every single app my phone has. Afternoons of exploring the exciting, albeit tourist packed, streets of London and enjoying delicious treats the food stalls have on offer. Evenings of couch cuddles and Netflix movies with Denzel Washington saving the world from taxi driving serial killers or delving into the evils of the food industry, inevitably trying to cover the fact that I have fallen asleep through at least half of whatever we had chosen to watch.

A new Friday night tradition has developed over the past few months, pizza made from scratch. How completely original of us! Unique or not, it is a delicious way to end a long week of glitter and red pens. It has also presented a few challenges. At first I just put on anything (okay, everything) that I love that could be considered a pizza topping. This clearly failed. The importance of the base quality has also become clear. One evening I spent over an hour charring peppers, mushrooms, zucchinis, onions and egg plant, so far it was a success. However, when I put these delicious toppings on a base that was horrendous it was a total failure. My poor husband was about halfway through his first piece when his face revealed the fact that he was about to show to me the pizza which he had just managed to swallow. This pizza was sadly binned.

I am happy to report that my ability to make an edible, and now even enjoyable, pizza base has come a very long way! Our staple recipe was actually found by accident, when I only had self-raising flour left to use. This base is more like a tea biscuit and because it doesn't rise you can roll it out to get a thin crust. Side note: failing to have all crucial ingredients to make a recipe is a lifelong challenge I am currently working to overcome.  

Pizza Base

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups of self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (Yes Mom, salt. Just use it!!!)
1/3 - 1/2 cup warm water
3 tablespoons olive oil

Method
1. Put the flour and salt in a mixing bowl.  Create a well in the centre of the bowl, add the water and the olive oil. (Or...just put the flour, salt, water and olive oil in a bowl and start mixing. Let's be honest, on a Friday I ain't making no 'well'!) 
2. Use a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients, starting from the centre and working your way towards the side. (Or...using whatever spoon you happen to have clean on a Friday, or your hand if nothing else is clean.)
3. Heat the oven to 350 F. Roll the dough to 1/4" thick. Now this rolling business has proved quite tricky for me. Getting it to 1/4" is easy enough, getting it into a circle has proved to be my own personal Everest. It usually looks like a giant paint splat. Last night I spent AGES trying to make it look somewhat presentable so it wouldn't look like I made it with my toes in the photo. Don't judge, it is MUCH harder than it looks. 
4. Bake the plain base for 5-7 minutes (or whenever you realise you put it in the oven and walked off to see what Kim Kardashian was up to on E!, completely forgetting you even put something in the oven).
5. Add toppings, bake as usual.




1 comment:

  1. My niece, the drama queen. You will enter our homes next week (during your Easter visit to Canada) like a whirling dervish, demanding meals made from salt-laden, organic food that has never touched the evil plastic. We will likely make some effort to comply. Love you dear. ;)

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