In the O’Neill house Wednesday is pizza night, and it’s my favourite night of the week! Pizza is such a versatile food, you can go crazy with toppings and adapt it to suit whatever diet/ mood your in; whether it’s a sloppy meat feast, a cauliflower base vegetable feast or somewhere in the middle… and that’s where our recipe comes in. A wholemeal base that has more fibre,is soft yet crunchy, and is the perfect base for making a healthier pizza at home. This recipe I’ve adapted from lots of different lessons at school, and have figured out the sticking points with the help of my year 7’s!
Some pointers: Only use bread flour, you will end up with cake if you use plain as it doesn’t have enough gluten. Add the water slowly, lots of factors can affect the amount of water you need from the type of flour to how warm the room is, add it slowly or you might end up with sludge! You only need a small amount of flour on your rolling pin, thats it. The final pointer is that you must use warm water, cold will not activate the yeast and hot will kill it!
Equipment:
- Bowl
- Scales
- Rolling Pin
- Pizza trays
- Table knife
Ingredients:
- 200g wholemeal bread flour per pizza
- 1tbsp olive oil per pizza
- 1/4 sachet yeast per pizza
- 1/2tsp salt per pizza
- Around 150ml warm water per pizza
Method:
- Add the salt, yeast and flour to a bowl and stir.
- Add in the oil. Add the water in small amounts and stir with the table knife.
- Keep adding water and stirring until the dough comes together and isn’t too sticky.
- Tip out the dough onto a surface and knead for about 5 minutes.
- Portion out the dough and leave to rest for about 10 minutes.
- Knead the dough again for about a minute and roll out with a lightly floured rolling pin.
- Once rolled out, put the dough onto a lightly floured pizza tray and add whatever toppings you want to.
- Cook for 15-18 minutes at 200°C, making sure to turn the pizza at 10 minutes in. The pizza crust should sound hollow when tapped and the cheese should be golden brown and melted.