Pepperoni Pizza

I know it's January and everyone's New Year's resolution was probably not to eat unhealthy stuff, but I'm just gonna go right ahead and post this pizza recipe because it's delicious! I apologize to our waistlines in advance...

I love Italian food, I actually think I could live off of pasta and pizza. I'm pretty sure my jeans (and my arteries) wouldn't forgive me for this though, but I am kind of glad I have some jeans with stretch for when I do allow myself to indulge.

Tonight we had pasta and Italian sausage in a home made Tomato and Mascarpone sauce. I just made it up one evening, a little bit of this... a little bit of that. Turned out great and now we keep stuffing our faces with it. I will get round to blogging the recipe some day, I didn't know it would become such a hit with the boyfriend and I, so didn't take photos!

It was extra amazing today because we had Reindeer shaped pasta from IKEA. Sorry, that's just too cool.

In keeping with my love of Italian food, my Aunt and Uncle bought me two Italian cooking bibles for Christmas: La Cucina and The Silver Spoon. I seriously can't wait to be done with all this Uni crap, I'm dying to make stuff from them, I think I bookmarked about a thousand recipes. That's a whole lot of carbs... Best get my running gear on.

Onwards with the recipe! My Mum's been making this dough for years and we all love it, it's very versatile and yeast free so you can whip it up in minutes. I'm aware this probably isn't traditional and one day I probably will try another dough, although since I love this one, maybe not for a long while!

My other half likes thin and crispy, whereas I like thick and doughy, but because I'm such a good girlfriend I let him have thin and crispy :)

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Serves 1/2 - depends how hungry you are!

Makes one 13 inch thin crust pizza (probably about a 6 inch thick, doughy one)

Recipe for the Pizza sauce adapted from Closet Cooking

Ingredients for the dough:

> 8oz bread flour
> 4oz cold water
> 1tbsp olive oil
> 1/4tsp salt

Ingredients for the Pizza sauce:

> A little olive oil for the pan
> 1 clove of garlic, minced
> 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
> 1/2tsp Oregano
> salt and pepper to taste

To top the pizza off:

You can pretty much have anything you like, but here's what we did. (My boyfriend wanted a different pizza to me)

> 10-12 slices of pepperoni
> 1/2 - 1 cup of grated mature cheddar
> 2 handfuls of fresh spinach
> 3 slices of mozarella

Method:

> To get the best pizza, I would advise using a pizza stone. They hold heat a lot better than baking trays and give you a crisp base. Preheat the oven to maximum, about 230 degrees C. The key to a crisp base is letting the pizza stone heat up for an hour in a hot oven. Of course, if you don't have a pizza stone you can use a baking tray.
> When you put the pizza stone in to warm up, make the pizza sauce so it can have some time to cool. Place a little bit of oil in a medium sized saucepan over a medium heat.
> Once the oil is hot, but not smoking, add in the garlic and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add in the chopped tomatoes, oregano and season to taste. Don't bring to a full boil, but once it starts to bubble, turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes.
> Once the sauce is nice and thick turn the heat off and leave to cool. This makes enough to cover the pizza base.
> After the pizza stone has been warming for about 40 minutes you should start the dough. Place all of the ingredients for the dough into a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer.


> Mix until a soft dough forms. It takes about 2 minutes with a stand mixer.
> Lightly flour the work surface and turn the dough out.


> Roll out the dough until you have a 13 inch round. I would advise turning the dough 1/8th of a turn after every roll to ensure it stays round.


> Take the stone out of the oven, or get a baking tray. Place the dough onto the stone/baking tray and then spread the sauce all over the base. (Yea... we got a bit carried away with rolling and ended up with a pizza base slightly too large for the stone...)


> Now it's time to go wild with toppings! I wanted just pepperoni and my other half wanted spinach and mozzarella with his pepperoni so we did a half and half pizza!


> Place in the oven for 10-12 minutes until the edges are lightly golden and crispy. Lift the base up and check if the middle is done. If not then turn the oven down to 200 degrees C and cook for a few more minutes until the middle is cooked through. If you have to do this, it's imperative you turn down the oven otherwise you could burn the edges! I like crisp, but charcoaled is a bit much!
> Once cooked, slice into 6-8 pieces and serve immediately. You could serve with some salad, but I went for just carbs and meat :D