In Freshers’ Week, my diet was almost entirely made up of pizza. Like me, you must have indulged in the bombardment of free pizza and vouchers for even more free pizza. In that first week of university, I was 110 per cent pizza.
Since then, my life has been pizza-free. OK, I did make two exceptions when Papa John’s realised they had to up their game and joined the bandwagon of giving out free pizza. Post-Freshers’ Week has been tough, as everyone knows that you can’t replace an addiction with nothing, so naturally I’ve been craving pizza. There’s just something really guilty about ordering pizza from a takeaway, though. So this week, I have made three different mini pizzas from scratch – mini to avoid that overwhelming feeling of guilt after finishing a whole pizza by myself. I thought three would be nice to allow me to experiment with toppings and they’re definitely filling, too!
Ingredients:
250g plain white flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, ½ a tablespoon of yeast, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 160ml lukewarm water
Boil water, not fully, but until lukewarm. Sieve the flour and salt onto a clean, smooth surface (a table or counter). Now make a well in the middle. In a jug, pour the sugar, yeast, water and oil and mix well. Then, start pouring the mix into the well gradually (on my first attempt at doing this, my well broke and the mix was running everywhere so be careful!) and use a fork or a spoon to draw in the flour at the sides.
Keep doing this until the mix has been used up and start kneading the dough with your hands – make sure you’ve covered them in flour! If your dough is too sticky, add more flour. Knead for a good 10-15 minutes, stretching it to make it more elastic, until your dough is smooth. Then flatten your dough, stretching it at the sides to make it bigger. Finally, your pizza base is ready!
Once you have put your toppings on, drizzle some oil on the top of your pizza and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, 220˚C. It make take a little longer or shorter (I slightly overcooked my pizza), so check your pizza after 10 minutes and judge it by sight.
The three different pizzas I made were:
1. Pesto with mozzarella cheese, broccoli and sun-dried tomatoes (but you could normal tomatoes as it’s cheaper);
2. Barbecue sauce with mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, salami and sausages;
3. Bolognese tomato sauce, sweetcorn, onions and aubergines.
Ingredients:
Pizza Base (for three mini pizzas): Tesco Everyday Value Self-Raising Flour – 45p, Tesco Saxa Table Salt 750g – 80p, Tesco Silver Spoon Sugar 1kg – 79p, Tesco Easy Bake Yeast Tin 100g – 99p, Tesco Olive Oil 250ml – £1. Total Cost: £4.03 Cost per serving: 44p
Toppings I bought:
Lidl Pesto – 99p, Lidl Tomato Sauce – 75p, HP Barbecue Sauce – £1.95, Lidl Grated Mozzarella – £1.19, Lidl Tomatoes – £1 (Sun-dried – £1.59), Lidl Sweetcorn – £1.15 (Pack of 3), Tesco Broccoli – 49p, Lidl Sausages – 99p, Lidl Pepperoni Salami – 79p, Tesco Brown Onion – 16p, Lidl Aubergine – 45p, Lidl Mushrooms – 89p