"Steamed yellow French beans, griddled courgettes and their flowers, rocket and marjoram are all from my tiny, weeny garden. The dough is made from leftover sourdough from this afternoon's mammoth bread making session. Big sis arrives tomorrow. I don't want her to think I am slacking".
Yesterday I was busy making bread. I weighed the ingredients carefully, even the water which bakers' say is a must if you want to get the consistency of dough right. But something went wrong. The sourdough was too wet and I began to suspect my old digital scales were failing me. I tested them by weighing a known weight several times and I got inconsistent readings.
What to do? Replace the scales but what about the 2kg of very elastic, very wet sourdough I was going to make into four lovely crusty loaves?
If sourdough is too wet, the shape will fall as soon as it is released from the proving basket.
The only thing to do even at this late stage was to knead in some more flour. I did this last night and left the dough to rise over night in the fridge. I have my fingers crossed that my first aid will work. The loaves look much firmer in their baskets this morning and they are about to be cooked.
Meanwhile I assessed the amount of dough and I have too much. Drat those scales!
I took 100g of dough and used it to make a base for a pizza to top with vegetables from the garden and half a ball of mozzarella left over from yesterday's salad of peach, mozzarella, basil, lemon and cracked pepper.
The main thing about making pizza is remaining true to the concept of what makes a great pizza. The ingredients do not have to be expensive or even plentiful but they do have to be of excellent quality and cooked carefully in a fiercely hot oven.
Walking round my little garden I spotted a few ingredients I thought might make the pizza special - courgette flowers; courgettes, dwarf yellow French beans (Franchi's Fagiolo Nano Bergold) and rocket. I had a bunch of marjoram dried a week or so ago plus a few cloves of this years lovely, plump garlic which I crushed and added to some olive oil to drizzle over the top of the pizza.
To make everything from the garden pizza
Serves 1 - scale up if you want to make more
Ingredients for one generous pizza
100g bread dough per person
2 ripe plum tomatoes, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed with 1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium sized courgette, sliced lengthways into 4 or 5 strips (and the flower if you have it)
1 handful of French beans, steamed for 5 minutes
1/2 red chilli, chopped
Dried marjoram/oregano
Salt and black pepper
2 cloves garlic, crushed and added to a little olive oil
Olive oil
1 ball of fresh mozzarella, torn into small pieces
10 dry black olives
Method
Preheat oven to 250C / gas mark 9. Roll the bread dough into a circle 0.25 cm thick and approximately 30cm in diameter. Top with thinly sliced, ripe tomatoes. Sprinkle with sea, salt, black pepper and marjoram or oregano. Place in the preheated oven to cook for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, daub the courgette with a little olive oil and griddle until almost cooked and steam the french beans.
When the tomatoes and dough are almost cooked (aprrox 10 minutes), remove from the oven and arrange the courgette strips, beans, courgette flower chilli, mozzarella and olives over the top of the pizza and dab with a little of the garlicky oil. Return to the searing hot oven for another five to 10 minutes until the edges of the pizza are crisp and well browned. Cut, serve with strewn rocket and eat with fingers.
A few tips
- Preheat oven in good time. Pizza needs searing heat to cook well.
- Use a good tomato base. At this time of the year thinly sliced ripe home grown tomatoes have enough flavour - use them if you can.
- Less is more. I used one small courgette and about 6 beans for the pizza above. If you load too many toppings on a pizza the middle will remain uncooked and will be soggy. Soggy is bad!
- Roll the dough thin. Aim for a crisp edge and slightly doughy centre.
- Go for unami flavours ie. all those lovely salty,savoury flavours that make Italian food taste wonderful.
- Try to keep to a theme for your pizza...its a bit like choosing an outfit. The ingredients need to key in with the theme.
- Anything you place on top of your pizza should be wafer thin or sliced thinly so it cooks quickly.