Roberta’s Recipes: Pizza time!

Well, dear friends, I’d done it almost all in the kitchen, baked lasagne, cakes and bread – but only yesterday for the first time I tried my hand at making my own pizza! My Mum often made pizza when I was a kid, but once I had my own household I thought it was just so much easier to order a ready one. But once you’ve been in lockdown long enough, without a steady flow of work and money, you do start thinking of being more economical and making your own pizza – and it’s not at all difficult, either, and it also offers endless possibilities for various combinations of toppings!

The ingredients here are for a pizza for 2-4 people – depending on how hungry you are…

300g flour, 1tsp dried yeast, 30ml milk, 100ml passata, 250g grated cheese, salt, sugar, olive oil – plus any sort of topping you like: ham, bacon, salami, olives, slices of bell peppers, mushrooms or pineapples, …

Mix the milk with 150ml water and warm it up a bit, but not too much, just above room temperature. In a bowl, mix the flour, yeast and 1tsp salt with a spoon, then slowly add 3-4 tbsp of olive oil and the milk-water mixture; stir well until the dough is smooth.

Take the dough out on a floured surface and knead for 3-4 minutes (a very good exercise, too; does miracles for the muscles in your boobs, girls!). Then, put it back into the bowl, cover with a towel and let it rest for 1 ½ hours in a warm place without draughts; the dough should double in size during that time.

Meanwhile, in a bowl mix the passata with a pinch of salt and half a tsp sugar.

When the dough is ready, you can do one big pizza or two smaller ones, whichever you like; roll the dough out (or, if you feel bold enough, throw it around in the air like a real Italian chef until it’s thin enough, that’ll give it a nice thick edge all around, too) and place it on a baking tray laid out with baking foil. Spread the passata on it evenly and top with the cheese – and with whatever else you feel like, either vegetarian or non!

I decided on Milan salami, bits of bacon, red bell pepper stripes, chopped plum tomatoes from the tin and halved black olives – yummy!! Just bake in the oven at 220° for 10-12 minutes until the cheese is golden brown.

Well, I don’t think I’ll ever order a takeaway pizza anymore or buy a frozen pizza from the supermarket – DIY is just so much more fun and so much more creative, and cheaper! AND it’s tastier, too…