With our mini pizza recipe, we do a lesson about tomatoes. We show a tomato plant to the children, and they learn that plants need water and sun to grow well. We show them that one gets different shapes and colours tomatoes, and that we make a sauce from tomatoes which is used to form the base on our pizza.
Ingredients
Dough
1 kg white bread flour
1 tbspn fine sea salt
2 x 7 g dried yeast sachets
1 tbspn caster sugar
4 tbspns extra virgin olive oil
Tomato Base
Any store-bought or homemade tomato sauce.
Pizza dough is best when kneaded for at least 7 min.
Method for mini pizza
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.
Dough
Sieve the flour/s and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and oil into 650ml of lukewarm water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands.
Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough. Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size. Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called knocking back the dough.
You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in clingfilm, in the fridge (or freezer) until required.If using straight away, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas – this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas.
Form your pizza and use a store-bought or homemade tomato (Neapolitan) sauce to cover. You can add anything you like such as ham, mince, mozzarella cheese etc. Bake for 10 -20 minutes depending on the size of your pizza.
*Dough recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver.