When The Moon Hits Your Eye

In my earlier blogging about feeding a family, I briefly mentioned that Saturday nights at Casa Verde are Pizza & Beer nights. When we first started that tradition, the pizza was from our local pizza joint, and the beer was something fabulous like Little Creatures Pale Ale. This was back in the day when DH and I were both making some decent money, and so spending a bit of dosh on a bit of luxury once a week was okay.

And then we weren't so flush, and the beer became whatever was on special at Aldi, and the pizza became par-baked bases bought from the deli and whatever cheese and veg we had in the fridge.

And then we got even less flush than that, and the beer stayed as the Aldi special but the pizza became entirely made from scratch. We actually messed around with a couple of different recipes before settling on one we liked. Further to my extreme laziness, we eventually settled on a recipe which required NO rising time. PLUS it was a "dump in the mixer and bugger off" recipe which requires little or no input from me in terms of actual work so it was especially good.

What we discovered was that the whole thing was costing us literally a fraction of what it used to, it tasted a heck of a lot nicer, and according to the guys at Choice, we were improving our family's health at the same time. Actually it was that Choice article (combined with our lack of funds) which made me want to look for a good 'at home' recipe for pizza dough.

Since I've been promising to share some quick, family friendly recipes with you all, I figured I'd earn some bonus points by giving you something which is guaranteed to be enjoyed by everyone from the kids to the grown-ups. This is the basic recipe but you can be shmancy and add things like garlic, basil, and so on to the dough to flavour it. And if you're really feeling brave, let the kids get into the kitchen and help, too!

We've made huge rectangular pizzas, individual rounds, or several larger rounds depending on DH's mood for messing about in the kitchen. You could probably make calzones with this recipe, too. To feed our family of 5, we double the recipe below and end up with a few leftovers.

Pizza Dough
375g plain flour (I use high gluten bread flour, but the normal sort will work, too)
7g dry yeast
30ml vegetable oil
6g salt
10g white sugar
235ml warm water

Dump the dry ingredients into a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook and mix around a bit until you feel you've had enough. Add in the oil and water and mix until the dough comes together nicely. Pull it out of the mixer, bash it around for as long as you have patience (or not at all, that's the beauty of it.) Push it around until it's the shape and size you want.

Slide onto an oiled oven tray, top with whatever's in the fridge, and bake. DH will often slide it off the tray for the last 3-5 minutes of baking just to give it a bit more crispiness.

Bake 10-15 m at 210C.

Enjoy!