Homemade pizza

Whether you’re having a quiet, cosy night in by yourself or with family, or are hosting a house party, homemade pizza never disappoints. The good thing is that there are no rules when it comes to the toppings, and you can make yours exactly how you like. It’s also a great way to use up some leftover ingredients in your fridge. I often make mine with mince beef, however this time I made mine half chicken – half tuna.

Dough for the pizza base
350g strong white bread flour
1 sachet of fast action dried yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
2 dl lukewarm water

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

2. Mix the warm water and oil together, and add to the dry ingredients slowly, whilst mixing. I use a food food processor, but if you’ve doing this by hand a wooden fork is good, as it will tie air into the dough. Knead for about 10 minutes. Kneading the dough for this long will help you get it to rise nicely.

3. Cover with an oiled cling film, and a non-see-through cloth, and leave to rise for 30 minutes.

4. Flatten the dough by hand. I then tend to use a rolling pin to get the dough thin. I usually make one big pizza, so I then place the dough in the oven tray, and stretch it to the whole size of the tray by hand. It’s easy to do, as the dough is very flexible and won’t break easily.

Tomato sauce

1 celery stick
1-2 carrots
1 medium onion
2-3 garlic cloves
handful of fresh basil leaves
handful of fresh parsley
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
4 tbsp tomato purée
dried oregano
dried herbs de provence
olive oil
salt
black pepper

1. In a blender, finely chop onion, garlic, carrot, celery and fresh herbs,  and fry in olive oil in  pan.

2. Blend the chopped tomatoes, and add to the pan. Add dried herbs and tomato purée, and season with salt and pepper.

3. Put back in the blender, to make extra smooth texture, otherwise it’ll be somewhat coarse.

Building your pizza

1. Spread some tomato sauce on.

2. Sprinkle most of the grated cheese on. I tend to use something like cheddar. Today I used a mixture of cheddar, red leicester and manchego.

3. Add the other ingredients of your liking, and sprinkle the remaining cheese on. I used tomatoes, red pepper, mushrooms and red onion. On the tuna half, I crumbled some blue cheese on top, on the chicken half (I cut the chicken into small pieces and pan fried it) I used the same cheese mixture as at the bottom of the pizza.

4. Heat the oven to 250°C / 480°F. Place the pizza on the bottom shelf and cook for 15 minutes. When I take the pizza out I tend to squeeze some raw garlic, and sprinkle some dried oregano on (this might be a Finnish habit).