Pizza night

There comes a time when our fridge is full of left overs and scraps of food. Small and tasty but nothing of such quantity to make a complete dish from. When it gets to this point there are three default meals:

• Stir fry
• Minestrone soup
• Pizza

And last week it was pizza. I use Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's foolproof pizza dough for the bases.

250g strong white bread flour
250g plain white flour
5g powdered dried yeast
10g salt
325ml warm water
About 1 tbsp olive oil
1 handful coarse flour (rye, semolina or polenta), for dusting
In a bowl, mix the flours, yeast, salt and water to form a sticky dough. Mix in the oil, then turn out on to a clean work surface and knead until smooth and silky. (Alternatively, if you have a mixer with a dough hook, mix the flours, yeast, salt and water on a low speed, add the oil and knead for 10 minutes). Shape into a round, and leave to rise in a clean bowl, covered with a plastic bag, until doubled in size. Then take a tennis ball sized lump of dough and fashion a base about 5mm thick. As you can see I haven't got the hang of throwung the dough in the air to make those nice neat rounds!

We each have a base and raid the fridge and larder. Andrew's usually has chorizo and I hog any scraps of goat's cheese. Served with a green salad they are a perfect mid-week supper and I feel virtuous that I haven't thrown any food away!



Meaty on the left;veggie on the right
Regular readers may feel that after three weeks without a post one about pizza is a bit pathetic. And I would agree. But we've hardly had time to draw breath this month but I'm hoping for a quiet bank holiday when I can play catch up. Honest.