Homemade Pizza – Sweet Potato, Pinenuts, Baby Spinnach, Avocado and Persian Fetta
Don’t you hate it when your hungry but can’t really work out what you want?….well this was me tonight. Today was a long day and I was looking forward to a relaxing evening. So I decided a homemade pizza was in order. Pizzas are a very hard thing for me to make at home – I tend to go overboard with the ingredients! I know the best pizzas are generally the ones which use minimal but the best quality of ingredients….however I just can’t help myself. Mainly the reason behind this is that I like to eat lots of vegetables and try to fit them all on my pizza. So I have come up with a way around this – I make a pizza with one of my favourite salads on it and have a side salad to go with it = happy me.
So firstly I started by making me dough. I use a basic dough mixture that never seems to fail me.
Pizza Dough – Makes one large pizza or 4 individual pizzas
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 x 7g sachet dry yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
1. Combine flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre.
2. Stir yeast into 2/3 cup of lukewarm water in a small jug; stir in oil.
3. Pour yeast mixture into flour and stir until the mixture comes together.
4. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface for 5 minutes (the dough should become smooth and elastic. Place in a clean, lightly oiled large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Half fill a kitchen sick with warm tap water. Place bowl in water and let it stand for 30 minutes or until the dough doubles in size.
5. Remove dough from the bowl and punch the air out of the dough. If making one large pizza roll out dough to desired shape and desired thickness. If making four small pizzas, divide the dough into four rounds and roll each out seperately – I like my pizzas thin and crispy, how do you like yours?
6. Prick the dough with a fork prior to putting on any toppings so air bubbles do not form whilst cooking.
So whilst the dough was proving I got onto making the rest of my pizza. First things first I popped my pizza stone in the oven and turned my oven up to its highest temperature. I find the pizza stones work the best in making crispy based pizzas.
My pizza sauce was the next step. I made a basic tomato sauce which combined the following ingredients;
Basic Tomato Pizza Sauce (enough for 1 large or 4 small pizzas)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
8 very ripe tomatoes, chopped
Handful of basil leaves, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil
1. Heat a dash of olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add garlic and cook for 2 minutes.
2. Add tomatoes and tomato paste to the garlic.
3. Simmer over medium heat until the tomatos have softened and the sauce has reduced (approximately 10 minutes).
4. Remove from the heat and stir in basil leaves and salt and pepper to taste.
After making the tomato sauce I got onto making one of my favourite salads – Sweet Potato Salad.
-Roasted peeled cubes of sweet potato
-Dry roasted pinenuts
-Diced some red onion
-Cubed avocado
-Grabbed a handful of spinnach
-Gathered some Persian Fetta
Don’t forget the pinenuts – they make this pizza
Then the assembly began. After rolling out my dough, I popped my homemade pizza sauce on the pizza. I then topped with some freshly sliced mozzarella cheese ( a skill I learned from my days working at a Pizza shop – the cheese on the base makes sure the toppings stick- who knew!). Then I topped with my roasted sweet potato, diced red onion and a little more cheese. My pizza then went in the oven. I did pop some cornmeal on my pizza stone in order to make sure the base did not stick.
Whilst the pizza was in the oven…I make this salad to go with my pizza (to ensure I got my fill of greens)!
Greens Salad with Peach
When my pizza turned crispy (about 15 minutes later) I removed it from the oven and then topped with the baby spinnach, avocado, pinenuts and persian fetta…..and then I relaxed and enjoyed.
Yum x
The Baking Jogger Blogger 