For the past year or so my friend Grub and I have sat down every few weeks, ordered a pizza from Clever Wally’s Raw Pizza (they deliver it, you cook it. Yep - doesn’t seem to make sense I know.) and stuck the DVD player on. We’ve made our way through Rome and the first series of the Sopranos but times have changed: Grub now knows how to make pizza bases.
After cooking a roast in his fully functioning oven I have been desperate to cook at Grub’s again. Not least because the ice cream maker he bought me lives there. On Thursday I stormed round with posh ham and olives ready to be taught the delicate art of pizza-making.
Two decent-sized pizza bases need:
250g of strong white flour
A pinch of salt
15g of yeast
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 spoon of clear honey
150ml of hand-warm water
You need whatever cheese takes your fancy and a tomato sauce. On the suggestion of pizza-master Grub Smith three toppings is the limit or the whole thing turns out a bit soggy.
Mix the yeast, flour and salt together slowly adding the water, oil and the honey until the dough comes away from the side of the bowl. Flour a surface and knead the dough for a while to get the air out, until it’s a bit firmer.
I took absolutely dozens of pictures of all of this excitement on Grub’s camera so I don’t think they’ll ever see the light of day. Which is a pity as there’s a charming one of me in a Paul Newman apron given to Grub by the man himself. All the photos were taken on my phone which is why they're a bit off.
Shove the ball of dough into a bowl with a tiny bit of oil and cover it with some clingfilm. Stick the bowl in a warm oven for an hour so the dough rises. Honestly, rising dough will never stop making me clap and jump around like an arse.
Flour a surface and knead the dough again for about ten minutes. Shape the dough into a ball and flour a rolling pin. Roll the dough out into a thin twelve inch disk. While the base might look quite flimsy it’ll rise while you cook it.
Heat the oven at about 200°c while you top the pizza. Spoon over some tomato sauce and if you’re feeling fancy some sun-dried tomatoes. Add the cheese and whatever else you want and stick it on some greaseproof paper in the oven for about ten minutes. Being the modern, go-getting guy he is Grub has a pizza stone - which is, essentially, a round bit of stone you bake pizzas on - but I imagine a baking tray would work just as well.
My bog standard pizza had:
Cheddar, three tonnes of black olives and rather a lot of red onion.
Grub’s rather posh pizza had:
Sun-dried tomatoes, a little cheddar, a little grated parmesan, goat’s cheese, mushrooms, prosciutto, olives and red onion. (He clearly doesn’t follow his three-topping rule but what’re you going to do?)
