Pizza with little people

I found myself babysitting, so I thought we could make pizza. After all it's a pretty simple dough (Flour water yeast) and if I cut up the toppings & manned the oven a five yr-old could do most of the work right ?

Mostly.
I got Them to test the water for the yeast (like Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold) and to mix up the dough.

The stickiness of this step was not entirely welcome, but making a well in the flour & then pouring water into it seemed to be about the best fun you could have. That said we ended up with a ball of dough that wasn't too bad after 5-10 minutes and some deft avuncular handy work.

We took a break at this point, the recipe I'm using for the dough doesn't need to rest, but the little fingers appreciated it. I shooed them out of the kitchen, cranked the oven up & chopped a few toppings.

The salami is really for my benefit, and I know pineapple on pizza isn't great, but I didn't want to make food that was too new/unusual/weird.
Anyway everyone love smooshing out dough into a rough pizza shape. Everyone except my nephew every time it got thin enough he'd roll it back up & start again.

We eventually got a pizza shape everybody was happy with, I assisted in covering them with sauce and then it was time to make some Pizza. Somebody was insistent that theirs was a face, somebody else was more interested in how much stuff would fit on the base.

Not bad though, minimal interference from me (though I admit to not braving making tomato sauce with them & using a jar of pasta sauce instead). Popping them in the oven wasn't greeted with enthusiasm, in fact there were a couple of howls of dismay. Until we realized that they could be seen through the door.

10 minutes later and :-

Hmm maybe I let him pile a little too much ham on there. I've not got any eating photos as we were a bit on the busy side at that point. We managed to join the clean plate club too. First outing cooking with the tinnies was definitely a success. What to do next time ?

Irish Calzone

In the pizza experiments, using the BBQ kept turning up as an idea. It is quite a reasonable one too, as the barbie gets a lot hotter than my oven. So I used the dough recipe to make some thin crusts and gave it a go. The main problem is wrestling the floppy topping charged dough on & off the hot grill. I simple answer is to fold your pizza in half. Ok its not a true calzone, but its close enough.

The  Prosciutto & potato pizza made a big impression, an excess of potato (yeah its the cheaper ingredient) & dough led to experimentation, I mean Ham & Bacon are basically the same right ? Getting to the bottom of the sauce led me to adding onions . Voilà  the Irish calzone. Bacon,potato,onion and cheese, grilled quickly over a high heat for a minute or 2 each side. The photo above doesn't do it real justice, but next time you are making pizzas give this one a go.

Pizza !

Over at lifehacker they're pretty serious about pizza. Pizza is pretty nice, I can get one delivered with little more effort than opening a new tab on my browser, so what's the fuss about ?

Homemade pizzas

Turns out pizza is one of those things worth the hassle. Heston Blumenthal goes into his usual depth when he makes pizza in "Perfection" Kilos of tomatoes get used, dough is prefermented and so on. The main thing he talks about though is the temperature at which the pizza gets cooked. Wood fired pizza ovens are really hot, hotter than you can get out of a domestic oven. Fortunately there are some simple solutions to get you started.

First, dough. My pizzas were made with a simple flour,water,yeast and salt dough. It takes about 10 minutes & doesn't need to prove though letting it rest always helps. Toppings, cheese & tomato are glutamate rich, so a well made pizza should have a strong umami flavour. To get my tomato sauce I butchered a ketchup recipe leaving out the sugar & the final reduction and fiddling with the seasoning (Basically I left out the spices & added more herbs). Takes about an hour, though most of that is the sauce bubbling away on its own. The 2 pizza halves up top are potato & prosciutto (top) and Salami & mushroom (bottom). To cook them I used the skillet method, heat a cast iron pan on full heat for about 20 minutes, meanwhile get the grill going at full heat.

Slip the prepared pizza onto the bottom of the skillet(*) and whiz everything under the grill, 2 minutes later you have pizza. Really good pizza, OK it takes more than opening a tab on your browser (I had to do that to get the dough recipe) but the taste is worth it.

(*) Sounds simple, it's not. You are going to be wrestling with a floppy circle of dough, loaded with sauce,cheese & toppings and a ferociously hot pan. Get help, make sure you've got tools and take care.