My geek used to live on Pizza Hut before he met me. He could easily go 5 nights a week ordering pizza. Obviously that had to change. Over the years we’ve created “Friday Fun Night”. This was intended to experiment with new recipes, but the only thing that we’ve experimented with is pizza. He still can’t live without pizza once a week, so if your beloved is a pizza junkie try this out for a special occasion.

When making your dough it always seems to rise better when it’s humid and hot. So a sticky day or night is perfect pizza making weather. If you can’t wait for warm weather make sure your house or at least kitchen is nice and toasty.

This makes 2 medium-family sized pizzas.

Dough Ingredients
1 teaspoon dried yeast
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup warm water
1/2 tbs honey
Approx. 2-3 cups 00 flour (the Italian 00 flour really makes the best bases)

Tomato Spread
3 tomatoes de-seeded (just cut in half and squeeze out the seeds)
1/2 handful fresh basil
Handful grated pizza cheese (mozzarella, parmesan etc)

Toppings
Fresh pineapple
Ham or prosciutto
Buffalo mozzarella
Anything else that takes your fancy - but keep it simple

Method
Mix all of the dough ingredients together except for the flour. Leave for about 10 minutes for the yeast to activate. There should be bubbles on the surface. Add one cup of flour and mix well. Continue to add half a cup of flour at a time. Keep mixing between adding flour. You want to stop adding flour when your dough has the consistency of being sticking, but not too sticky that is sticks to your fingers if you press it. You might not need all of the flour or you might need more. If you stuff it up and it starts crumbling and looks dry, add a bit of water to try to get it right.

Once you are happy with the dough you need to get it out of your bowl and onto a floured bench. Take out all of your frustrations for the day by pounding it for a few minutes. Then put it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and put somewhere warm. You need to leave it for at least 1 hour, but really the longer you leave it the better. If you can manage 6 hours super!

Whilst waiting for your dough, put the tomatoes and basil together in a blender to create a paste. Then just wait, perhaps you want to listen to some Perry Como to get you in the mood for an Italian feast.

Once your dough is ready divide it in half. Roll out one half into a medium sized pizza base. Before you start rolling you want to put your oven on to really hot (around 220C). Pre-cook your pizza base for a couple of minutes with no topping on it.

Then take it out of the oven, spread it with the tomato paste, sprinkle on some cheese and place your toppings in an artistic fashion. Break up bits of buffalo mozzarella and place these on top. Then put your pizza into the oven. We cook one at a time in the top shelf, as the bottom shelf doesn’t get hot enough. Pizzas take about 5-10 minutes each depending on the strength of your oven.

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