Stovetop pizza

Yes, I admit, it has been a very long time since I've written a food post. Shame on me! The reason? Since December of last year, we have been hopping between the city and The House in the country.

Originally, we were in a service apartment and did a little bit of basic cooking, but it was difficult what with me not being in my own kitchen, with all my own spices, tools and equipment.

Then we moved into a small, basement apartment (it was cheaper!) and this one has NO kitchen. I have a small electric hot plate that I use occasionally for soup and ramen noodles, and that's it. There has been no cooking in that apartment.

We're home for the week and I'm living it up by cooking up a storm.

I found this recipe on how to cook a pizza on the stovetop on Facebook and thought I'd try it. I always love an easy way to make the dough for pizza.

Here's the recipe for the pizza:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup self raising flour
• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 2/3 cup warm water
• Pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 teaspoon dry yeast
• Pizza toppings

Instructions:

• In a large flat based, vertical sides fry pan, mix base ingredients all together and level out in pan
• Top with toppings - tomato sauce, cheese, etc.
• Cover with lid or tin foil (if you don't have a lid) for 5 minutes, with vents shut. Cook on medium heat
• After 5 minutes, open vents or put slits in the tin foil to vent it, cook for another 12 minutes
• After 12 minutes, take it off the heat
• Turn grill on high and put pan under the grill for 5 minutes to brown the tops of the cheese (the cheese melts and gets gooey but doesn't brown in the pan)
• Once the cheese has browned, remove from grill, leave to cool for a couple of minutes, then slice and serve
• Enjoy

I learned a few things about making this pizza and I thought I'd share it with you:

• It's as tasty as you want to make it, cos you can pretty much put whatever toppings you like on it.
• You can put the toppings right to the edge and it cooks without spilling over because of the sides of the pan. Very nice. I like that a lot.
• The original recipe says 10 minutes vented, I did 12. I think it cooked it better. Also, if you put a lot of cheese (which I did!) it may take longer to melt all the cheese.
• The original recipe doesn't say anything about putting the pizza under the grill to brown the cheese, that's something I like to do.
• The pizza tastes more like a deep dish pizza in texture rather than a thin crust pizza but I liked it.
• The video (see below) recommends you buy their pan, but seriously, the pan is over $200. I made do with my own non stick pan.
• The video doesn't say, but you want to cook on medium heat.
• Do not heat the pan prior to mixing ingredients. Do not mix ingredients over heat. Mix ingredients first, then put it on heat.

Will I make this again? Yes, I will. I liked it a lot. I particularly like the idea of making my own dough in a no fuss kind of way.

If you don't want to follow the written recipe above, you can also watch the Facebook video:

Let me know if you decide to make this pizza. I'd love to know how you did. Post a picture and be sure to tag me on Instagram or Twitter to I can see what you made.

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Pizza party!! ... with a tomato, basil and boccocini salad

So, The Boy has committed me to writing a post about pizza only I've just discovered that I've already blogged about our pizza making and repeating that would just be boring.

Here's the link to where I talk about our ingredients that top our pizza. This time though, we bought our pizza bases because we didn't have time to make our own pizza dough. We'll probably do that again when we make pizza next.

I also didn't have any pizza sauce made up, so we just bought a jar of pasta sauce and used that instead. Usually, I make my own pizza sauce, which consists of:

• 1 can diced Italian tomatoes
• 1 small tub of tomato paste
• Italian herbs (use as much or as little as you like!)
• Salt and pepper

I heat that in a pan and then blitz it with a hand blender until it's smooth and then let it cool. Usually that makes enough for about 4 serves of pizza. I put them into small baggies and freeze what I do not use. It defrosts just fine and once defrosted, I just add it straight onto the top of the pizza.

We had The Best Bud and his wife over to dinner so it was a little more that pizza that was served.

We started off with some garlic bread and a tomato, basil and Bocconcini salad.

The garlic bread was easy because we bought it, though I think next time I will make my own. The brand that we usually get was not available, so we tried the regular Coles brand (Coles seems to be replacing all the brands with their own brand and sometimes not for the better). The Coles brand garlic bread was disappointing. It was bland and did not have enough garlic or really any other flavor. Both The Boy and I were disappointed in it, but The Best Bud thought that it was ok. We had thought that we would keep any that was unfinished as leftovers to go with lunch the next day, but decided to toss the remaining pieces since it wasn't very good.

We love a good tomato, basil and Bocconcini salad and it's the easiest thing to make. We made enough this time to serve 4 people and here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• 3 vine ripened tomatoes (they taste better), cut into 7mm slices
• 1 tub of Bocconcini standard sizes cheese balls, sliced into 7mm slices
• Basil leaves
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Place the sliced tomatoes on a serving platter
• Place one basil leaf on each slice of tomato
• Place the sliced Bocconcini cheese on top of the basil leave
• Grind some salt and pepper over the top
• Drizzle olive oil over the top
• Serve and enjoy

It was a pretty leisurely evening, so we had the garlic bread and tomato, basil and Bocconcini salad first. After that we made up the pizza and popped it into the oven for 12 minutes at 180 degrees C to cook and melt the cheese. When that was ready, we had a few slices of pizza but decided not to eat the second pizza that we made so that there was room for an Affogato for dessert.

We ended up with a whole pizza leftover that we've put into the fridge. The Boy will probably have some for lunch over the next few days and will likely take a few slices to work as well.

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Pizza from last night

The thing I like about making pizza at home is that we can put exactly what toppings we like on the pizza and customize it to our taste.

Last night's pizza was exactly that - topped with green capsicum (green bell peppers to the Americans!), onion, mushrooms and pepperoni slices, mozzarella cheese and crushed garlic.

We forgot to put the chili flakes on, which we really enjoy, so ended up putting them on after the fact. It tastes better when it's put while assembling the pizza and the flavor gets baked in.

The Boy did a fabulous job rolling out the dough this time and it was almost exactly round. It certainly filled up the pizza pan well.

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Getting ready to make pizza

We're having pizza for dinner tonight. The fabulous Boy has been very good and gotten the ingredients and cut everything up in preparation for the pizza making. We already had the pizza dough in the freezer, as well as the pizza sauce, so that just have to come out and get defrosted. It's going to be yummy!

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Toppings on our very lopsided pizza

Well, our pizza dough didn't rise as much as it should have, though I'm not entirely certain of that.

We rolled it out on a baking sheet and rolling pin and it came out looking very lopsided. We decided that we could live with a lopsided pizza. Really, what choice did we have? I'm sure those pizza guys spend years perfecting their craft of throwing those perfect pizza rounds.

Toppings on the pizza included:

• Homemade pizza sauce
• 1/4 onion sliced thinly
• 1/4 green capsicum sliced thinly
• 4 mushrooms sliced thinly
• 6 cloves of garlic (we like garlic)
• Chili flakes (use or leave out depending on whether you like your spice or not)
• Homemade salami sliced thinly (courtesy of The Best Bud)
• Shredded mozzarella cheese

We've put it into the oven and now hoping for the best.

UPDATE: The pizza turned out to be very tasty despite it's very unfortunate shape, which we didn't notice while eating it. :-)

UPDATE 2: The Boy tells me that my recipe does not provide enough instructions, so here's the rest of it.

Here's my RECIPE for my homemade pizza sauce:

• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato paste
• Some Italian herbs
• Salt & pepper to taste

This makes a fair bit of sauce so what I like to do is use small baggies and make up single serves of pizza sauce to freeze for future use.

To prepare the sauce:

• Blend the diced tomatoes until smooth
• Add the tomato paste and herbs
• Place everything into a small pot
• Heat over the stove and bring to a boil
• Simmer gently for 1 hour, making sure the sauce doesn't dry out (if it is starting to look too dry or thick, just add some water)
•  Add the salt and pepper to taste
• Set it out to cool before using

And to put it all together:

• First of all, use about 4 or 5 tablespoons of the pizza sauce and spread all over the pizza base
• Then spread the minced garlic and sprinkle the chili flakes over the base
• After that, add a thin layer of the shredded cheese on the base
• Once that is done, layer the rest of your ingredients on the base
• Top with more shredded cheese and put into oven to cook at 160dC for about 15 to 20 minutes until the cheese is melted and golden brown

 Hope your pizza turns out fabulous.


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Our lump of pizza dough

Not very attractive, is it? And it's not rising either, or at least it doesn't appear to be rising. Maybe I didn't put in enough yeast? I did follow the recipe instructions carefully though. *sigh*


© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd