Homemade Pizza

This weekend my ex-boyfriend joined me in Brussels for a fun weekend of touring museums, watching Monthy Python and (best of all) cooking! I neglected to take photos as we were having such a nice time. However, I really wanted to share the recipe of the homemade pizza we made together.

Pizza with Rocket and Parma Ham

Ingredients:

• 500g strong Italian 00 flour
• 15g fresh yeast
• 10g salt
• 50g olive oil
• 320g water

Instructions:
Crumble the fresh yeast into the flour, add the salt and mix, then put in the liquids and mix into a gooey dough. Then knead it for up to 25 minutes. The dough is kneaded enough when it starts to form a skin. When it gets to this stage put it into a floured bowl and leave to rest for an hour or so. Put on the oven to gas mark 9.

After the hour take it out and divide it into 3 pieces (you get 3 bases with the quantities above). You roll it out into pizza bases at this stage, but its best not to use a roller as such. Instead I use the palm of my hand to spread out each piece of dough, and then stretch it after that until its a decent size. You should aim to have the edge of the rolled out pizza dough slightly thicker to get a nice crust. When its rolled out you can cook it immediately by putting the base directly on to a hot pizza stone.

For the final product, cook them at gas mark nine until the cheese starts to brown.

For toppings, I really like salami and jalapeno peppers. There's also the classic Parma ham /Parmesan/rocket which we used to make a lot. And finally pesto, chicken and pine nut works well.

A bientot,
Niamh