Twizza Party!

Last Thursday night, after a suggestion by Reindeer SP, a few of the recently acquainted Irish food bloggers got together for a pizza party.

Well, when I say we got together for a pizza party, I mean that we got together on The Internet. Naturually. Coz that’s how we do.

The lovely ladies at this Twizza Party were Dinner Du Jour, Babaduck Babbles, The Glutton, Like Mam Used To Bake, An American In Ireland, Bibliocook and Smorgasblog, with the brilliant Italian Foodie acting as a Pizza Judge. Throughout Thursday night, we tweeted about our pizza progress and end results.

Thanks especially to Like Mam Used To Bake who gave me some much needed twitter-encouragement regarding the evolution of my pizza dough – cheers for allaying my fears!

This was my first time making pizza and I followed a recipe from my beloved Jamie At Home book to the T, as I have such confidence in Jamie’s recipes, it helps me to relax when making new things. As I am a worrier-cook.

I divided the following recipe in two and in fact, I had too much dough in the end for the 3 of us who ended scoffing the one ginormous hybrid pizza I made.

The end result was very, very doughy and next time round, I’ll probably make a third of this dough recipe to make a pizza big enough to serve 4.

Rolling out the dough.

Dough in floured bowl, covered with damp tea towel for at least an hour.

Dough after rising in warm room under damp tea-cloth for an hour.

Here is the Jamie Oliver Pizza Dough recipe I used. Great for rookies.

In the Jamie At Home book, there’s a straightforward tomato sauce for the pizza base recipe. Fry a bit of garlic for 2 minutes, add a tin of whole plum tomatoes and fresh basil or oregano leaves. Allow to boil.

Pushing sauce through sieve for smooth texture nomness.

Once it has reached boiling point, take it off the heat and push the lot through sieve, so that all the lovely juice comes through. Put that sauce back into the pan and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes until it reduces to the right consistency for spreading on your pizza base.

I rolled out my dough into a giant rectangle and used some extra dough to make division for my toppings.

On top of the tomato sauce, I scattered some torn pieces of mozzarella cheese. Then I topped with my three topping varieties.

Topping 1: Wilted Spinach, Cherry Tomatoes and Ricotta Cheese.

Topping 2: Par-boiled Asparagus Tips, Parma Ham and Mascarpone Cheese

Topping 3: Caramelised Onion and Goat’s Cheese with a few Cherry Tomatoes for the craic

You do need to have the onions caramelised and ready to go, which will take 5 minutes or so. Your wilted spinach and par-boiled asparagus will only take 2 or 3 minutes, so get those ready just before you’re ready to put on the pizza base and into the oven.

The oven should be pre-heated to the full – 200 degrees C/Gas Mark 6. Your pizza with all the toppings will only take 15 minutse or so. It’s ready when it’s lovely and golden brown.