First For Everything: #2 Making My Own Pizza

I've done a bit of baking in the past, a few loaves at university that were a bit denser than they should have been, but never have I produced my very own pizza from scratch. I chose to rectify that.

Firstly I had to make the dough. A simple mixture consisting of 500g strong white flour; it has to be strong as the gluten in it compared to standard flour gives it the necessary elasticity after kneading. Add a teaspoon of sea salt, a teaspoon of caster sugar and a single sachet of dried yeast (usually about 7g or 8g) to 325ml of lukewarm water and leave to rest for a minute or so to let the yeast activate.

Add the water mixture steadily into the flour bit by bit, incorporating everything together with a fork. Carry on doing so until it's all basically mixed together and your wrist starts to hurt a bit. Take the dough out of the bowl and slap onto a surface that has been liberally dusted with enough flour to cause cleaning problems for weeks. Knead for about 10 minutes until one of three things happens: the 10 minutes actually pass by, the dough becomes a springy ball of deliciousness or, in my case, you haven't done any manual labour in weeks causing you to get unnecessarily tired and have to sit down. Leave to get really big in a bowl somewhere for about an hour.

You knead to perform those steps. It's the yeast you can do

Next is the sauce. Simply pour a tin of plum tomatoes into a saucepan on a medium heat and mash them with an appropriate utensil (a spoon, a masher, your fist etc.) until it has all been mushed up. Add salt, pepper, basil and oregano to taste and leave on the heat for as long as your Italian-senses tell you to leave it.

Grab your now voluptuous ball of dough and split it into four smaller balls; roll each ball into a rough circle about 5mm thick. Cut rectangles of Edam, place them on the edges of the dough, turn them over and crimp to form a delicious stuffed crust; repeat until you get bored or you finish. Add a spoonful or two of your sauce to the middle and top with Cheddar, Pepperoni and Mozzarella in that order. Place in the centre of your oven on a sheet of tinfoil for about 20 minutes. If that doesn't work then try preheating the oven to 200 degrees Celsius; that usually helps.

Take that, traditional Italian cuisine!

All in all I rather enjoyed my doughy exploits. The feeling you get after having created all the elements of the pizza from scratch, watching your family force slices of it down their throats with grimaces and fake praise is something everyone should experience.

I'd like to say it was an old family recipe, like Momma used to make, but it's mostly purloined from Jamie Oliver. Except the Edam cheese stuffed crust; that's a Food Philomath exclusive.