Sunday, January 26, 2014

My Second Attempt at Pizzas

A couple of years ago, I did a post about making pizza. At the time, I noted that the results were okay, but not without their problems. Since then, we've resorted to Tesco's pizzas - although they weren't as nice, the homemade ones weren't "better enough" to justify the effort. And yet, it seems every cookbook I get has some variation on pizzas, and they were all pretty easy-looking.

Today was the day for my second attempt as pizzas. This time, I took the method for the base from Paul Hollywood's "Bread", the method for the tomato sauce from "The Great British Bake Off Winter Kitchen", and the toppings from, well, Tesco I guess (for the record: mozzarella, onion, green pepper and, of course, pepperoni).

Making up the dough was easy, as before, and the results were good, as before. I tried tossing the pizza in a most professional manner, which actually worked quite well (though I've since seen a flaw in my technique). Then, in a variation from last time, I part-baked two of the bases for freezing. These were then cooled, topped, placed in the freezer for an hour, and then wrapped for 'proper' freezing. So, those should be good for a later date.

The third pizza was tonight's dinner, with the addition of some homemade chips. (Mmm, chips!)

And it was lovely. It seems that about 8 slices of pepperoni per pizza is right while one small onion, one green pepper, and two balls of cheese are the right amount for three largish pizzas. So, huzzah!

The only downside of this is that this pizza was definitely "better enough" to compel us to abandon Tesco's efforts (which, frankly, have slipped away quite badly of late anyway). So I'm going to have to put in yet more effort in keeping the freezer stocked. On the other hand, they're nicer, they're cheaper, and I've even managed to get some of the mess under control, so really, what's not to like?

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