Pizza Night…

A regular date I have with my friends is Pizza Night.

They have this amazing pizza oven, it’s a bit like a mini oven that stands on the work top and gives you great stone baked pizzas just as if you had a wood fired oven in your kitchen… like these here 

On pizza night everyone must bring two ingredients and the idea is that everyone takes turns making pizzas that you then all share so everyone get to taste everyone’s ideas… it’s always so much fun and always so tasty!
It’s especially sociable and it’s good to try new flavours that you would otherwise not eat. 

Look at our haul this time…

The boys make the dough from scratch, here is their recommended recipe from Jamie Oliver… 

starter | makes 6 to 8 medium-sized thin pizza bases
This is a fantastic, reliable, everyday pizza dough, which can also be used to make bread.
It’s best made with Italian Tipo ‘00’ flour, which is finer ground than normal flour, and it will give your dough an incredible super-smooth texture. Look for it in Italian delis and good supermarkets.
If using white bread flour instead, make sure it’s a strong one that’s high in gluten, as this will transform into a lovely, elastic dough, which is what you want. Mix in some semolina flour for a bit of colour and flavour if you like. 

Sieve the flour/s and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle.
In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well.
Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid.
Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands.
Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough. 

Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it.
Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size. 

 
Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called knocking back the dough. 

 
You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in clingfilm, in the fridge (or freezer) until required.
If using straight away, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas – this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas. 

 They make smallish pizzas, and they are traditional thin ones, we then cover in our chosen toppings, on this night we were trying to be extra clever as we are entering some in a competition to get a new pizza on a restaurant menu.

The boys also make a sauce, using tinned chopped tomatoes, onions herbs and garlic… you can make this sauce however you want it’s very easy. 
 

My combo was peaches, buffalo mozzarella and rocket. 

 
This mozzarella was well worth the splurge, it was so tasty… 

  
Peaches and mozzarella are a favourite salad combo of mine and I though they would make a really tasty and unusual pizza topping. 

  If you want to try this, and I suggest you do and it was sooooo yummy, I guess a little like the standard Hawaiian pizza, sweet, fruity and yummy I would grill the peaches first as they did let out a lot of juice… 

 
But I also hasten to add, did not affect the pizza, it was still crispy and when the rocket when on top it helped to soak up the juice… 

 
Another favourite that night was the Thai inspired pizza, now for the competition I had wanted to make a Thai version but had not been able to come up with any firm idea on how to make it happen… someone else did though… and it was great! 

Basically it all came down to the base topping, instead of the usual tomato sauce we used a green curry sauce, then added chicken, chillies, mozzarella and spring onions… 

 
definitely one of my favourites of all Pizza nights, it really worked well. 

The last favourite of the night was pancetta and avocado, I thought this would be tasty but it was so much better than I thought it would be… 

 
There were more pizzas after this but these were the stand out ones for me, all being ones from the guests… the host and pizza oven owner was very upset but his creation and host number two pizza although amazing was quite a strong-tasting one… all I can remember is lots of chilli (standard) and anchovies, yum! 

Thanks Ollie and Baz, more soon please!