Easy pizza, vegetarian or spicy

Today I did something I usually try to avoid. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. I didn’t set out to take a shortcut. It just worked out that way.

I went to the shop and was so pleased to find proper Italian pizza flour that I stopped for a closer look. It’s hardly a bargain (it costs 3 times as much as the Polish flour I can make pizza with perfectly well), but the version marked “with yeast” made me stop and think.

What do you mean, flour with the yeast already in it?

Yep. I haven’t the faintest idea how they do it, but I now know they do it well.

Primo, to stick with the Italian, dough made with this flour doesn’t need to rise (though I broke ranks and let mine rise a little).

Primo secundo, the pizza is really good and much quicker than the traditional kind (which is how I make it, with Polish flour, Polish dried yeast, olive oil and water). So if you fancy a quick pizza with no waiting for the dough to rise, one that tastes better than anything you could get delivered, I’d definitely recommend getting hold of this flour (photo below).

Oh, and this isn’t an advert. I wasn’t paid a penny (much to my sorrow) for writing up a recipe using this flour. So you can be sure this post comes straight from the heart, as usual (or perhaps the soul). Whatever it is I’ve got in there.

I recommend the pizza, perhaps not if you’re on a diet, but do make it with whatever toppings you like. Today I also made a sauce quite different from my usual one, lighter (runnier). And, unusually for me, one of the pizzas was vegetarian. Another experiment altogether: courgette and a raspberry tomato.

The other was the classic way I like it: spicy, with salami and chillies. Let’s get to it. Give it a go!

At a glance: 

Prep time: 50 minutes

Oven temperature: 220 degrees Celsius

Baking time: 17 minutes

Serves: hmm, several people?

Calories: don’t eat this when you’re fasting

Ingredients for a really good pizza:

        For the pizza dough:

• 300 grams of Italian pizza flour with yeast mixed in (photo below)
• half a glass of water
• two tablespoons of olive oil
• a teaspoon of salt

Pizza toppings (sauce and ingredients for the vegetarian and spicy pizzas):

• 250 grams of tomato passata
• 2 teaspoons of cane sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 1/3 of a courgette
• 15 pickled jalapeño peppers
• half a large raspberry tomato
• two medium shallots
• 10 decagrams of Dutch Gouda
• 350 grams of mozzarella (the kind that comes in a bag)
• 10 slices of salami (I had the crescent-shaped kind)
• ground black pepper
• dried herbes de Provence

Method (interestingly, no long rise):

I won’t pretend otherwise: I made the dough following the recipe on the flour packet. I did tweak it a bit because I wanted enough dough for 2 medium pizzas and one small one, so I used more flour and scaled up the other ingredients to match.

The interesting thing about this flour is that the packet suggests the dough needn’t rise. Knead it, slap it on the tray and straight into the oven with your pizza. I did let mine rise a little after kneading, though. The pizza turned out delicious.

To start with, I put the flour and salt in a big bowl, poured in the water and olive oil and started kneading. The dough was a bit too “wet”, so I added a little flour and kneaded it for about 10 minutes. Then I set it aside to rise for just 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan I heated half a tablespoon of olive oil with the passata, a pinch of salt and the sugar. I added a little water and heated the sauce for about 15 minutes, as long as the dough was rising. I didn’t want it too thick. Think fairly thick tomato soup, say, rather than ketchup.

I also got all the toppings ready in that time. I cut the mozzarella into strips and the Dutch Gouda into little pieces. I cut up the vegetables too and set everything aside in little bowls.

After 15 minutes the dough had only risen a little, but it was soft and springy enough that I could press it out into a fairly large, thin pizza base. Nice thing was, it didn’t tear at all.

I poured sauce onto the 3 pizza bases, spreading it evenly over the dough and of course leaving the edges bare. Then on went the toppings.

On the vegetarian pizza: courgette, tomato, shallot, mozzarella and Gouda.

On the spicy pizza: salami, shallot, jalapeños, mozzarella and Gouda.

I baked each pizza for about 17 minutes in an oven preheated to 220 degrees Celsius.

And that’s pretty much it. One very simple pizza, ready to eat. Enjoy!