I’m sure that most students would agree that, initially, it takes a while to strike a balance between pre-guessing your hunger and satisfying it. I’ve discovered the pattern of a typical evening; the plan is to meet at someone’s kitchen at about 7. You meet 20 minutes later than that. You start to feel hungry at half 7. You get very hungry at 8. You start eating strange snacks such as peanut butter and sugar sandwiches or raw mushrooms and ketchup. You get in to a weird ‘hangry’ mood where either a mad energy or acute tiredness washes over you. Then you finally sit down to eat at gone 9 with exasperated enthusiasm.
These evenings are the thanks we get for trying to cook all our meals from scratch. Pizza Night was something we had planned for a good week. Excited to continue using the bread flour and yeast from the baking last week, we knew we would have to leave the dough to rise for an hour whilst we made the other toppings. Toppings which had also been enthusiastically planned. Still, that hour knocked us back a bit and we regretfully plodded back through the typical pattern described above.
It was a funny evening though; with people arriving for prinks (pre-drinks) whilst our precious babies were still cooking. The mood lighting was set and rave music began blasting from the speakers on the table just as we sat down to eat. All the people that hadn’t eaten an evening meal (so the alcohol would have a more immediate effect) were wistfully sniffing at our glowing, oozy, cheesy pizzas.
It was a oddly nostalgic meal. Home-made pizzas being something my mum became an expert at with the help of the bread-maker, and frozen pizzas being the go-to meal with friends since the beginning of teen-age hood. It felt good to blend the two and to produce these beautiful half-way pizzas; not quite at my mum’s warm and cosy home-made standard, but far beyond the expertise of ordering a take-away with friends.
I can’t lie and say that this recipe is all my own. A big shout-out to the lovely Connie and her dad.
Pizza (Makes 4)
White bread flour - 500g
Yeast - 1 sachet
Salt - 1 tsp
Sugar - 1tsp
Olive oil - 2 tsp
Warm water - 300ml
For the tomato base:
Tinned tomatoes - 400g
Garlic - 2/3 cloves
Salt and pepper + oregano, thyme or any other appropriate herbs.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl then slowly add the oil and the warm water - mixing all the time.
- When a ball of dough is formed, knead it well for 10 minutes on a clean surface.
- Place the ball back into a floured bowl, sprinkle with more flour, cover with the-towel to rise (we left it on top of the microwave) for one hour.
- Whilst the dough rises you can get on with your toppings. Connie's recipe was caramelised red onions topped with sliced boiled potatoes and blue cheese. Mine was a tomato base with sliced, raw red onion, mushrooms and mozzarella.
- To make the tomato base, gently fry a couple of chopped cloves of garlic in a bit of olive oil. Add a whole tin/carton of chopped tomatoes. season with plenty of salt and pepper and leave to simmer for twenty minutes or so. If you're feeling lazy you can just use the unadulterated tomatoes straight from the tin/carton but beware - as the liquid hasn't cooked off your pizza base may become a bit soggy!
- When the dough is well-risen, knock it back by kneading for a few more mins. Split it in to four and roll each lump as thin as you like (we used a vodka bottle) and top with your desired toppings.
- Bake in an oven preheated as hot as you dare on a floured baking tray for 10-15 minutes.
