About a month ago, James May and his team made a pizza oven on James May’s Man Lab. It made me not only want pizza, but home made pizza. So, I have had a couple of goes since then and I think my creations are getting better. The first pizza was made using a strong white bread flour for the base. It was topped with a passata base, mixed grated cheese and a medley of vegetables.
Unfortunately, my main criticism of my first try in a long time was the base was too heavy. So, whilst away last week, I found a recipe in Waitrose Kitchen which used ’00’ flour instead (typically used for pasta) because it’s lighter. I cannot find the exact recipe on the website, but this one is very similar. My recipe used 350g of flour to 250ml luke warm water, but I did have to add a fair bit more flour because it was just too sticky; so I expect these quantities may work better. It also said in my recipe that you could use 2 tsp of dried yeast if that’s what you had, rather than fresh yeast. Oh, and I also didn’t add any honey! The dough rose really quickly though once kneaded. When cooked, the base was significantly lighter.
I topped it with red pepper pesto, roasted pine nuts, pre-boiled sliced baby new potatoes, chargrilled courgette slices and torn mozzarella. Cooked at 200c (fan oven temp) on a pre-heated baking sheet, it came out pretty darn well, even if I do say so myself!
