Pizza Lunch

It is one of The Husband's ambitions to build an outdoor pizza oven in the garden. It would be fair to say that pizza is one of his favourite foods. Only home made pizza will do though - and that includes the dough. We've done a fair bit of dough-recipe-testing in our time together, but this recipe, adapted a recipe from a Pizza Express cookbook, is by far the best we've tried.
At the moment, the woodfired pizza oven is just a dream, but I'm managing just fine for now with our regular oven!

Pizza Dough

150ml tepid water
14g fresh yeast, or 2 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
225g bread flour

(Enough for 1 large thin crust pizza)


Mix the yeast and sugar into the warm water, and leave for 15 minutes until slightly frothy. Mix into the flour (I always use my beloved Kenwood Patissier with the dough hook), and mix for about 10 minutes.

Leave in a bowl somewhere warm (warm kitchen is usually sufficient), covered with a damp towel or plastic bag. Leave for at least a couple of hours, by which time the dough will have doubled in size.

Take the dough out of the bowl, and knead on a floured surface for about 5 minutes (which is strangely therapeutic!).

I roll out the dough with a rolling pin (never mastered the proper way, but rolling works fine for me), and then top with pizza sauce, and whatever toppings are to hand. Today we had sliced garlic potatoes (left overs from the fridge), sliced pepperoni, onion and mushrooms. And finished off with a liberal sprinkling of cheese.

Pizza is always a winner in our house - even with The Daughter who is going through one of her frustratingly fussy stages at the moment.