Pizza for dinner

Tonight for dinner I needed to make something that was tasty but relatively easy to whip up. As I have said it's the school holidays here and with that goes a sense of relaxation and giving up the routine (or at least altering it a bit). As well as that daylight savings has just started with longer evenings and not feeling hungry until later. I know I'll have to reel it in closer to school going back but for now it's time to enjoy the lack of having so many boundaries on our time and day. 

I have to admit though, that I am a forward planner and no amount of 'relaxing' holiday time will change that. I either have dinner for the next night sorted by the time I go to bed or at the very latest by the next morning. It's a rare occasion that I haven't thought about it well in advance and those occasions are usually when the boys are at their dads house. 

Long ago I bought this fantastic book called 'Atisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day' by Jeff Hartzberg and Zoe Francois. What a revelation! You mix up a huge amount of dough with no kneading...literally just putting it all in a bowl and mixing it up with a spoon or else in the mixer with a dough hook. After letting it rise for a couple of hours you put the risen dough into the fridge where it can stay for up to 2 weeks. You take off what you need so if you really wanted you can have this beautiful bread every day, (belive me this is NOT so good for the waistline). As it 'matures' in the fridge the flavour seems to taste more like a sourdough. This really worth trying and links to the recipes and how to do it are all over the internet. I have made the boule dough as well as the challah and now the olive oil dough. I find that I tend to stick to the boule dough as it tastes fantastic and can be used in so many different ways. This morning I made a half batch of the olive oil dough with a view to making pizza that night.

The half batch made enough for 3 really good sized pizzas. I made 2 pizzas so I have enough for some foccacia over the weekend. My sons are pretty standard when it comes to pizza and while Harry likes bacon and cheese tonight he wanted a spaghetti, as in Watties, pizza with bacon and cheese so I made him one on a piece of Lebanese bread in the oven. For Reuben and I, I made proper pizzas in the covered BBQ. I made a basic tomato sauce for the base where I lightly cooked a finely chopped onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and added a can of crushed tomatoes in juice, some salt and pepper and a bit of sugar and reduced it down. Reuben had bacon, olives and cheese and I made the one in the photos for me which had the tomato sauce, prosciutto, mozzarella (cheap stuff I'm afraid to say as there was no way I was heading to the supermarket to buy some good stuff) and olives. On top of that I piled on some fresh rocket. It did taste pretty good and I especially like how rustic it looks. As the weather was so beautiful today it was lovely to be outside cooking again and makes me look forward to all the lovely food I can make when the weather gets warmer....I know great intentions but.....?