Diary of Spain in Lockdown - Pizza party!

Thursday 23^rd April

Following yesterday’s catastrophic Spring Vegetable Soup I promised the girls we would make pizzas. No, we wouldn’t unwrap one from its packaging and bung it in the oven for 10 minutes, nor would we use ready made pizza bases. We’re talking the whole sha-bang. We began with flour, water, salt, oil and the frozen ‘fresh’ yeast with a dubious best before date.

I’d never made bread or pizza dough before. Earlier this month I had fancied some hot cross buns for Easter but I took one look at the recipe, saw it said ‘yeast’, and quickly put the recipe book back on the shelf.

Yeast baking is unknown territory to me, so I’ve always steered clear of it. The only reason we had the errant lump of the stuff at the back of the freezer was because one of our Italian au-pairs a few years ago made pizza for us. Once.

I did some research and found a great video from an Italian chef online about making dough and followed him to the letter. The process is long, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t difficult following his instructions:

https://www.italyum.com/pizza-recipes/199-pizza-using-fresh-yeast.html

Then for the ‘rolling out’ of the dough to make the pizza base this video was also extremely helpful for us pizza novices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz-Yr1q-fKM

I never thought I’d enjoy making pizzas so much. It was great fun decorating them all together in our ‘pizza teams’. And of course eating them was the best part. I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious they were, just like something you’d eat in a proper Italian restaurant. The base was thin and crispy and the toppings delicious.

I’m a total convert, and never again will I buy frozen pizzas.