My Special Pizza

Lundulph doesn't like cheese, in fact he strongly disapproves of the whole concept. He says it's milk that's gone off. Actually that would be yogurt. Cheese would be a step beyond that.

I like pizza, I really do. So how combine the two? Besides tasting nice, if you put the chese on top of the pizza, it acts as a lid, getting everything else cooked and moist underneath. Posh restaurants put the cheese at the bottom, so the lid effect is a bit lost.

Still, here is my recipe, that I have developed.

Base

4 dl plain flour
1 dl wholemeal flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt
2 tbsp grape seed oil
1.75 dl water

Topping suggestions

1-2 cans of tuna in sunflower or olive oil
or
200-300 g sliced pepperoni
or
thinly sliced chicken

1 can chopped tomatoes or passata
mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 can of sweet corn
1-2 red peppers, thinly sliced
caper buds in vinegar
artichoke hearts in oil
1 onion, finely chopped or sliced
olives
basil
oregano
thyme
salt
pepper
chrushed chillies or hot pickled chillies

1. Mix all base ingredients into a dough. The dough can be frozen.
   
2. Grease a deep baking tin, preferably the non-stick type.
   
3. Roll out to just under 0.5 cm thickness and place on a non-stick deep baking tin. This is a tricky one, the dough tends to be quite unwilling to stretch, so roll it to be a bit bigger than the baking tin, as it'll shrink when you lift it up.
4. Brush the dough lightly with grape seed oil, then put on your choice of toppings. Cover with aluminium foil. And if you do like cheese, put that on last and skip the foil.
   
5. Bake at 225 degrees C or gas mark 7.

When baking in an electric oven, it's quite OK to use a sheet of greaseproof paper on the baking tin and put the pizza on that, but I've noticed that gas ovens are different and make the dough stick to the paper and it's impossible to get it off, so keep away from the easy paper alternative if you are using a gas oven.

Update 27.10.2006: I tried the pizza dough recipe from my bread machine, a Panasonic SD-253, it was very nice too.

Update 10.02.2007: Today I actually took the time to make a tomato sauce, rather than just use liquidised tomatoes. It is definitely worth doing this, it was a lot tastier.