Proper Pizza

Right. Yes. I am awful. This is exactly the same recipe as I put up in 2013, but it is brilliant, and my boyfriend has been away so I’ve basically been living off defrosted pizza dough because I can’t be arsed to make anything.

I’ve always thought I’d be great at living alone, but in fact I just pace around, sloshing glasses of red wine everywhere and desperately trying to talk to people. I ambushed our upstairs neighbour as she had a fag outside just to interact with an actual human. Poor woman.

Anyway. Pizza. This makes about six to eight portions, I tend to make a batch and then, as I said, freeze a load of it. It defrosts very quickly so it’s a good school night dinner, and who doesn’t love cold pizza for breakfast?

For the dough you need:

• 500g strong white bread flour
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 330ml tepid water – stick your finger in it and it shouldn’t feel hot or cold
•  7g yeast (one sachet or measure it out)
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• Half a tablespoon of brown sugar or honey

Mix the yeast into the water and then stir in the honey or sugar and oil. Give it a good stir.

Combine the flour and salt and pour in your wet ingredients. Mix well with a metal spoon until you’ve got a dough. It’ll be quite wet, but don’t worry.

Turn it out onto a well floured surface and start to knead. You need (HAHAHAHA) to do this for at least ten minutes. You’ll know when it’s done when you’ve got an elastic dough that’s easy to form into a springy ball.

Wipe a large bowl with olive oil and pop the dough in. Cover it with clingfilm making sure it’s air tight. Leave it somewhere warm for an hour or so until it has doubled in size. Here’s a photo from my first post (like I said, I am the worst). But do the clingfilm better:

So a generous one person pizza is a bit of that dough about the size of your fist. If you’re freezing it portion it off and stick each bit in a sandwich bag and chuck it in to sit until you need it.

Heat the oven as hot as it will go with an oven tray in there. Knead the dough you’re using, or the stuff you’ve defrosted, for a few minutes on yet another well floured surface. Roll it out as thin as possible and pop onto a lightly floured bit of tin foil.

Add your toppings, and carefully place the foil onto the oven tray. Cook for around ten to 12 minutes, until the cheese is nice and gooey.

(If you like your base crispy, stick it in the oven for a few minutes until it has started to brown very slightly. You might need to stick a fork in any bubbles that spring up.)

CHEESE ADVICE: The best cheese to use is the blocks of sort of dry mozzarella which you can get almost anywhere. It’s usually got a big thing saying PIZZA! on them. Normal mozzarella is totally fine to use, but you might find a lot of liquid comes out of it while cooking. The grated stuff is great, but it doesn’t melt and spread out as well

I like a bit of rocket on mine to pretend I’m healthy. Plus a load of chilli oil.