Pizza Party

I'm packing up my flat at the moment, ready to move back home for the summer, but I thought I'd take a break and quickly write a new recipe for you. I'm going to really miss Manchester when I leave, which, for those of you who knew my feelings before I arrived, is quite surprising. Coming from a small town and then a very safe big city (Singapore) I thought crime ridden Manchester would leave me refusing to leave my room apart from to go to lectures to stay safe. Well, one thing I learnt quickly is that Manchester and Greater Manchester are different and if you're sensible and somewhat cautious (not waving your phone around on street corners etc) then it's a great place to live and study. Summer is looking very busy and then my next adventure begins - I am studying in Poitiers for a year so you will have some French produce orientated recipes to come, as well as many of my favourites.

 

Homemade pizza is one of my favourite things to make and serve my friends, especially if there is a wide variety of foods that are off the cards for certain guests. This way, I can just give everyone a base and a choice of toppings and they can put it together how they like, and if there are any issues with certain foods being cooked in the oven at the same time I can just switch the running order of pizzas being cooked (for instance my friends who don't eat pork tend to prefer that their pizzas aren't in the oven at the same time as my ham and sweetcorn one). We all stand around my kitchen counter and chat whilst the pizzas are being topped, cooked and eaten. It's a really fun activity and good for any low fuss evening. Plus they taste so much better than shop bought pizzas and are cheaper than takeaways.

Do any of you have a goal for the summer? Mine is to learn how to better use this blog by learning code at Codecademy so if anything goes wrong I can try to sort it myself. Let me know your goals in the comments.

Pizza Recipe

Serves 4

Oven at 220˚

Ingredients

300g bread flour

1tsp instant yeast

1tsp salt

1tbsp olive oil

200ml warm water - 1 part boiling to 3 parts cold

Tomato passata

125g buffalo mozzarella (or more!)

Whatever other toppings you'd like (sweetcorn, pineapple, ham, red peppers, other cheeses, chorizo and pieces of cooked shredded chicken are popular requests from my friends)

Method

Put the flour into a large bowl and add the salt to one side and the yeast to another (if they touch the salt will kill the yeast).

Pour in the oil and warm water.

Mix everything together until it forms a ball, whereupon you need to take it out of the bowl and knead on a floured surface until smooth and pliable (about 5 minutes).

Return to the bowl and cover with clingfilm, leaving to rise for 30 minutes to a hour.

Knock the dough back by kneading it for 30 seconds and then spilt it into 4 for individual pizzas or 2 if people are sharing (I weigh it and divide it like that to make things fair).

Roll out to the size you want to have a pizza - toss it in the air if you're feeling brave but remember to catch it on your knuckles and not your fingers, or it will tear!

Let everyone top their pizza as they wish but make sure they're on the baking trays first or they're a nightmare to move and then cook them in the hot oven for 8-12 minutes.

Enjoy!