Christmas Dinner... Pizza-style

In a recent post, I explored the possibility of turning the humble pizza - whose leftovers can so often form a 'breakfast of champions' the morning after - into an actual all-day breakfast, with surprisingly good results. Coincidentally I had a similar sort of thing on my recent trip to LA, eating a 'Sunny Side Up Bacon and Potato' pizza - a seasonally inspired special at California Pizza Kitchen. Pizza is, after all, one of the most universally adaptable forms of food.

So, when my girlfriend and I started discussing how we would deal with Christmas dinner - since one of us would certainly not be partaking of the traditional turkey - one of the earliest suggestions, directly inspired by the All Day Breakfast idea, was 'Christmas Dinner Pizza'.

The most obvious necessity for my pizza was Gilbert's Turkey Roll Pastrami (bought at Morrisons) which, with its black pepper-coating, has made for some rather tasty sandwiches for my lunches during the working week. After that, it was a case of determining what other Christmas Dinner staples should be included. Potato would have involved rather too much wastage, sprouts and most other veg were easy passes. What I really wanted to include, somehow, was stuffing and cranberry sauce. We'd picked up some dried cranberries for some cookies that we've baked to take over to my folks tomorrow, but just adding dried fruit to the pizza seemed weird. Thankfully, I noticed, nestled in our fridge, a pack of Yorkshire Wensleydale with cranberries (also from Morrisons), and so chopped off a few small pieces to scatter around.

I'm a huge fan of 'pigs in blankets' - small pork sausages wrapped in streaky bacon - which tend to be served as part of Christmas dinner at my folks', so I also bought a pack of them - eight were arranged on the pizza, the last two in the pack were left separate. Upon reflection, I think I probably should have picked up the 12-pack rather than the 10-pack, since that would have given me four overs, which could have been kept aside for our evening meal.

The final ingredient was an idea borrowed from my girlfriend - she'd added pickled red cabbage to her vegetarian version of a Christmas pizza (featuring pieces of a Quorn 'Turkey' Burger), which made it all nice and colourful, so I figured I'd add some to mine as well.

Before. Note that the pigs in blankets had already had about 10 minutes in
the oven prior to being added to the pizza for this shot. The stuffing had
been cooked separately, according to its own instructions

So, after about 10-12 minutes in my oven, the pigs in blankets were done to perfection, the Wensleydale and cranberry had melted into the mozzarella, the stuffing was nicely crisped, and the end result looked like this:

After... But before I scoffed it all down. Obviously.

I must confess to some surprise that this turned out as well as it did - particularly with the addition of the Wensleydale with cranberry (that, being such an unusual and late addition to the range of flavours, was the wild card, but the overall effect worked very well). I mean, OK, it's unlikely that I'd ever complain about something involving pigs in blankets, I already knew the turkey pastrami was nice (rather more moist than the average roast turkey!), and stuffing is little more than additional herbs... but there was plenty of room for it to be terrible simply because it's a bit of a jumble.

The only thing that did go slightly wrong was the pickled cabbage, which could have done with a bit more draining before it was chucked onto the pizza, as it ended up soaking right through and causing a damp patch in the middle of the base.

I had been a little concerned about the stuffing, as my girlfriend started preparing the whole packet, where I'd intended only to make a small amount, rolling into balls to distribute around the pizza. However, even once cooked in an oven-proof dish, the stuffing below the crisp surface remains moist and malleable, and easily stands up to further time in the oven. I ended up not shaping it as it was still rather hot when we started making the pizzas, but I think that just adds to the 'hand-made charm' of my pizza.

A decidedly tasty and tidy Christmas dinner, with very little washing up required afterward... and so another success for pizza as a method of preparation.

All-Day Breakfast Pizza

Yes, you read that right... All-Day Breakfast, but on a Pizza.

Oh, come on, it can't possibly be the most revolting pizza topping you've heard of unless you missed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the first time round, when they were cool (allegedly - I beg to differ), back in the 80s (or was it the 90s?). I'm pretty sure I remember one TMNT-branded pizza that involved ice cream, for crying out loud.

And surely I need not mention Iceland's doner kebab pizza?

So here's the thing: my girlfriend and I have been home-making pizzas once in a while - sometimes baking the bases (made from a Wright's flour mix or Supermarket equivalent, though we will eventually make our own from scratch), other times purchasing a ready-made base. Once the base is sorted, pizza is the easiest thing in the world to prepare: slather on the tomato purée, chuck on some cheese, apply toppings with impunity, bake for 10-15 minutes, then consume while still nice, hot and melty.

I hadn't originally planned to make an all-day breakfast pizza. Originally, I was just going to be topped with halves of the pork and bacon cocktail sausages I'd picked up in Morrisons... But when my girlfriend decided to experiment by cracking an egg over her artichoke, olive and goat's cheese pizza, the thought occurred to me that adding an egg to something that already contained tomato, sausage and bacon (of a sort) basically turned it into an all-day breakfast.

The egg element turned out to be rather more complicated than expected... but that's where being second in line for the oven came in handy. Typically, when making a pizza with a ready-baked base, one cooks the pizza just long enough to get the beginnings of browning on the cheese - generally about ten minutes. The egg, we thought, should only take about five additional minutes at pizza-baking temperatures, making a total cooking time of fifteen minutes.

Whether it was the combination of ingredients already on the pizza, or the fact that she checked its progress by opening the oven, the egg on my girlfriend's pizza needed an additional ten minutes... and even then, the white was still quite runny, while the yolk was effectively soft-boiled.

So, for mine, I cooked the basic tomato/cheese/sausage pizza for only five minutes, then cracked the egg into the centre and slapped it back in the oven for ten minutes. Still the same fifteen minute stay in the oven, but without interruption. The end result for me was a much firmer white, but pretty much the same 'soft-boiled' yolk. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair:

It turned out pretty good... While I'm still rather dubious of the idea of egg on a pizza - and, frankly, the whole concept of an all-day breakfast pizza - I'm going to call this a success... While we normally stick to Mozzarella as our formaggio preferito, I had noticed bags of "Four Cheese Mix" on Morrisons' shelves - a melange of grated Mozzarella, Edam, mature cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses which was just begging to be used as pizza topping. It melted nicely and evenly and had that little bit more bite, in and of itself, than Mozzarella on its own.

The flavour of both the sausages and the egg held up remarkably well against the tag-team of cheeses... the only caveat being that, in retrospect, it's rather an underachieving all-day breakfast. At the very least, it could have done with some seasoning - a little pepper, if nothing else.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if it wouldn't have been better with plain pork cocktail sausages and separate bacon (strips or chunks)... maybe some mushrooms... chunks of potato... and possibly a base that's less tomato purée and more sliced tomato.

Though even I would probably have to draw the line before adding baked beans into the mix.

Home-Made Pizza... From Scratch (ish)

As a long-time pizza lover, I've always wondered what it would be like to make it from scratch. I've tried lots of 'almost' options, such as putting tomato purée and cheese atop pittas, but they're never quite the authentic pizza experience. Ready-made pizza bases are available in some supermarkets, but that's still only 'almost from scratch'. What I really wanted was to make up some raw dough, pile on the toppings, and then watch as it rises and cooks in my oven.

On one of my whims one weekend, I suggested to my girlfriend that we make pizzas using some Ciabatta flour I had in my cupboards (somewhat past its use-by date but, hey...) and the last few dribbles in a tube of tomato purée. All we needed was some Mozarella and then whatever our hearts desired to scatter upon the top. For me, that's an easy choice - Pepperoni, or some variation on the spiced meat theme. My girlfriend tends to be a bit more adventurous...

The most interesting thing to note in this is that different flour mixes - that is to say, the same type of bread, but mixes from different sources - have different preparation/kneading/rising requirements and working with them tends to be a very different experience. The Waitrose stuff, despite being past its prime, worked out well, so we followed up with a second round of home-made pizza, this time using Wright's Ciabatta mix for comparison, and in an attempt to rectify the one obvious problem we had the first time round.

Ingredients:

• 500g bag Ciabatta flour (Waitrose the first time, used Wright's the second)
• Plain Flour (to coat a work-surface for kneading)
• Tomato Purée
• Grated Mozzarella
• Toppings!

Preparation Time: approx 15 minutes (plus rising time) to prepare the dough, then about 12 minutes to cook

Tools Required:

• Large Mixing Bowl
• Baking Tray or Biscuit Tray
• Rolling Pin (if you wish)

The Process:
As mentioned, the two versions of Ciabatta bread mix had rather different preparation instructions. The best bet, always, is to simply follow the instructions on the pack. If it has a subsection of instructions for making rolls, that's probably the set to follow, since you'll very likely want to divide the dough.

The Waitrose version needed to be mixed, kneaded, set aside to rise (I believe about 50 minutes was recommended, the idea being that the dough should virtually double in size), then kneaded some more before getting it ready to bake. The Wright's version only instructed one round of kneading - prior to rising - and ended up slightly stickier and more difficult to work with, even after being left to rise. Both wanted to be smeared with olive oil for that authentic crust. It's not absolutely necessary for a pizza, but it's certainly worth trying.

The first time, we cut the dough in half and each half became a pizza base. The second time, we cut the dough in half, then divided one of those halves again to make smaller, thinner bases, and used the remaining half to bake a Ciabatta loaf. On both occasions, tomato purée was squeezed onto the dough, spread out, then coated generously (much more generously that a ready-made supermarket pizza, I should add) with Mozzarella.

My topping, in both cases, was sliced German peppered salami - whole slices the first time, then chopped up pieces the second. My girlfriend first went with peach segments, even more Mozzarella (pretty much the remainder of the bag, since we bought ready-grated) and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, then chose tomato and basil the second time.

The Results:
It's just possible that the second round of kneading for the Waitrose flour mix - since it required a floured work surface - is what helped dry the dough out and make it less sticky to work with. The Wrights mix recommends doing all the kneading in one hit, so it's taking on less extra flour. It's also possible that we added just a bit too much water, because the quantity listed in the instructions didn't seem to be enough at the initial mixing stage...

Either way, the first attempt worked out well, but the central part of both the pizzas hadn't cooked especially well, despite the edges of mine being slightly burnt (largely because mine was on the middle shelf, and so one edge was right up against the fan, and I didn't think to turn it!). Where it rose, it rose very well, and the result was a nice, light and very tasty base... but it was basically deep pan, and even the cheese overload on the Peach & Balsamic Drizzle pizza wasn't quite enough to support a deep pan pizza... Hence the reduced quantity of dough the second time around.

While I don't have photos of the second attempt, I can honestly say they weren't as elegant. The stickier dough was tricky to work with - my one attempt to use a rolling pin very nearly destroyed my pizza base entirely - and neither could be called 'round'. Weirdly, the thinner base didn't have a great effect on how well cooked it was at the end, but I'd certainly say it was more thoroughly cooked.

The interesting thing to note is that dough can be frozen, so one could mix up an entire bag of flour, divide it into two, three or four pieces, then store some of it away to make home-made pizza some other time, without all the waiting around and kneading.

Making this almost from scratch was certainly a rewarding experience, and it's one I'm keen to repeat in future... If only because the toppings are limited only by my imagination and, if I put my mind to it, I can imagine pizza with something other than pepperoni/salami.

...Though it probably won't stop me visiting my favourite pizza restaurant from time to time...

Whole slices of German peppered salami

Peach in a great sea of Mozzarella, with a balsamic drizzle

Iceland Rising Dough Double Pepperoni Pizza

Call me cynical, but when it comes to shop-bought pizzas, I rarely believe the claims of the packaging beyond the description of the topping, and even that's often subject to some lively internal debate.

So when Iceland present me with a new pizza option - this so-called 'Rising Dough' product, with a photograph on the box which depicts something not dissimilar in appearance to any other Iceland pizza - I'm naturally going to be a little sceptical...

...and yet...

This is probably not the most effective photograph for demonstrating exactly how much this dough rose, but let me be clear:

This dough really rises. A lot.

Naturally, due to the vagaries of dough manufacture and cooking by fan assisted convection, to say it doesn't rise evenly would be a massive understatement. On the left of the photo, you may be able to discern a particularly mountainous region from which the toppings have toppled. Before the pizza went into the oven (straight from the freezer, for a mere 20-ish minutes), the toppings were fairly evenly distributed. Such was no longer the case when cooking had finished... in fact, it looked very much as though some of the toppings had simply disappeared. Obviously 2 different kinds of pepperoni don't just evaporate in the oven, so they've just collected into the troughs of the pizza.

What's rather impressive about this rising dough - aside from the extent to which it rises - is that it doesn't rise by creating massive bubbles. So... it rises unevenly without, yet evenly within. Just the kind of weirdness I like in my food. Or something. The base is, perhaps, a little excessive for my preference (very much a thin'n'crispy kinda guy), but the flavour is better than a lot of other shop-bought pizzas I've tried (and I've tried a lot).

In other respects, this is a pretty typical shop-bought pizza - scant cheese scattered unevenly, a stingy smear of tomato purée, greasy pepperoni that makes the experience of eating it slightly more acidic than it need be... weirdly, though, I didn't get that scuffing on the roof of my mouth that I usually get when I have a pepperoni pizza (seriously, folks, is that just me, or is it a common phenomenon?).

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised - yet another Iceland product for which my expectations were low, which turned out to actually be rather good... and all this for a mere £2. That may well be slightly more expensive than some of their other own-brand products, and largely for the sake of a gimmick, but it certainly makes a change from the usual soggy, slimy things that come out of cardboard boxes.

Waitrose Piemonte Inspired Pizza with Truffled White Sauce & Italian Porcini Mushrooms

If there's one thing guaranteed to get my attention in a supermarket, it's a product with a poncy name. OK, they're designed to let the customer know that it's something new, something special, something the manufacturer is especially pleased with - deserving of its own line, and the requisite highlighting.

Most of the time, there's actually very little difference between any one poncily-named product and a comparable product in a standard own-brand line, or something by one of the big names. In short, a lot of the time, the new label is little more than an obvious target on which folks like me are delighted to pour scorn.

And, sadly, this particular 'Inspired' pizza is one such product.

That's not to say it isn't good... Just that it isn't really deserving of any special attention.

Here's what the box says:
"Inspired by the rich, intense flavours of Italy's Piemonte region, with truffled white sauce, succulent porcini mushrooms and mozzarella, on a thin, crisp base, hand-stretched from the centre for a light, puffy edge and charred in a hot oven for extra flavour."

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but when I read a phrase light 'intense flavours', I tend to expect rather more than I got out of this pizza. In fact, my abiding impression of this product was that, even following the cooking instructions to the letter (and using the low end of their recommended cooking times), the base no longer had a 'light, puffy' edge, but a tough, crunchy one. And perhaps it's just my unrefined palette, but I tasted no discernible difference between the 'truffled white sauce' and any white sauce I've ever had on a pizza. It was light, it was creamy... and that's really all I can say about it. The mushrooms, meanwhile, were certainly succulent, but their flavour was entirely overwhelmed by the white sauce and the scant addition of mozzarella.

There was also one large part of the pizza which was almost entirely devoid of toppings, because a large bubble had formed in the dough, making everything fall/run off it. What toppings there were had been baked to a crisp. This is a common thing with pizzas, though, and it seems to be hard to avoid.

The dough is a rather confusing component. Much of it tasted rather bland, but the crisp edges had a rather sharp, bitter element. The ingredients list 'sourdough powder', suggestive of something sprinkled on the dough, rather than being an active part of it, but there's no further detail about the dough - while everything else has its own little ingredients list.

But, as I said, this is a good pizza... and the toppings may well have been inspired by the Piemonte region (truffles and porcini mushrooms being their speciality) but, somewhere along the lines, the combination of ingredients did each other a great disservice, and resulted in a pizza whose very creamy white sauce dulls whatever flavour the mushrooms may have when fresh, and in which only the most discriminating of palettes might possibly detect the merest hint of truffle.

As mushroom pizzas go, it has a good flavour, but nothing about it struck me as 'intense'. There are several other pizzas in Waitrose 'Inspired' line, and I may well give them a go but, at £5 a throw, I shall be looking elsewhere for mushroom pizzas.

Quick & Easy Homemade Pizza

Pizza, despite being among my favourite foods, seems like way too much effort to make from scratch. Even though it is (or was, at least) possible to buy a pizza base mix (also used for making doughballs), that's more effort than I'd tend to want to put in. Some time ago, however, I happened to be defrosting some bread and realised that, in it's warm, moist, fresh-from-the-microwave state, a couple of slices could be relieved of their crusts and squashed together to form a quick and dirty (and square) pizza base. I didn't get round to attempting that experiment, and it was a type of bread I don't always buy, so I started considering alternatives. The first one that sprung to mind was Pitta bread... it's almost the right shape anyway, more or less the right consistency, and it's certainly flat enough to support the other makings of a pizza.

So, how does one turn Pitta bread into pizza? Here's the breakdown for a 'Margarita' equivalent - add your own toppings as you please...

Ingredients:

• Pitta Bread
• Tomato Purée
• Basil
• Black Pepper
• Garlic (either fresh - crushed or sliced - or granules)
• Mozzarella (can be bought ready-grated or in chunks)

Preparation Time: about 15-20 minutes

Tools Required:

• Table Knife or Spoon (for spreading the purée)
• Um... That's it, I think...
• Unless you're chopping or crushing the garlic, or grating your own Mozzarella, in which case a Kitchen Knife, Garlic Press and/or Grater will be needed

The Process:
Preheat the oven to about 170C (slightly higher for non-fan-assisted models). For each Pitta Pizza, spread a generous helping of tomato purée over one side of the Pitta. Sprinkle on some basil, black pepper, garlic and finally the mozzarella. Add whatever toppings you prefer.

Place the pittas directly onto the middle shelf of the oven, and leave to cook for about 15 minutes, keeping an eye on their progress so they can be pulled out early if necessary.

Wow... How easy was that?

The Results:
I went for wholemeal Pittas, got a bit clumsy with the granulated garlic, and topped my pizzas with large pepperoni slices. In 15 minutes, they were done to perfection, and tasted great (let's face it, you'll never know yourself if you used too much garlic... but someone else might point it out to you). The tomato purée was sweeter than the tomato sauce used on the average shop-bought pizza, or the kind of thing you'd tend to be served in a restaurant, so the addition of basil, black pepper and garlic toned it down somewhat, and gave it a more full-bodied flavour. Because of the size of pepperoni slices I used, each pitta could only usefully accommodate 3 slices, but other toppings could certainly be added more liberally.

The downside to using Pittas is their tendency to open up, making a 2-layer base. That said, if you were that way inclined, you could add more Mozzarella to the interior, creating your very own stuffed crust. The Pittas I used crusted up quite nicely, but this did lead to a rather crumbly base.

Addendum: Having now tried this under the grill, I can confirm that this is the preferable option - in the oven, while the Mozzarella melted perfectly, the toppings remained essentially untouched (well, the pepperoni started leaking its oils, but that's about it). Grilling will not only melt the cheese, but start to cook the toppings too, giving a much more authentically 'cooked pizza' quality to the end result.

Iceland Pizzarante Speciale

Perhaps I have only myself to blame but, having tried and enjoyed some other Iceland pizzas, I thought I'd give this "Italian style pizza" a go. This isn't from the same range as the stonebaked one I've blogged about, but it is the same price-point - £1.50. The packaging is standard Iceland fare, which probably should have clued me in, but the promise of Emmental cheese, salami and pepperoni (along with ham and mushrooms) seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sadly, as far as flavour goes, you may as well eliminate the salami and pepperoni from the list... I can see they're there, but they had virtually no flavour - none of the kick one would associate with these types of Italian sausage. I'd expect the ham to be bland (it is formed rather than sliced, after all), but surely a spicy sausage should give the tongue something to do while each mouthful is being chewed?

Not being a cheese fan, I also have to admit that couldn't tell Emental from any other kind of cheese on this thing... again, nothing special about it. It's not lacking in quantity, either... just not outstanding.

In fact, the only thing that I really enjoyed about this particular pizza was the base which, contrary to expectation from a ready-made, frozen pizza, actually more-or-less delivers on its promise of being 'Italian style'. It's light, crisp, and very tasty.

One thing I may never fully understand is why so many ready-made pizzas are made in Austria. I'd like to think this has no bearing on the flavour (after all, even if they used Austrian spicy sausage, it should taste pretty good)... but for a supposedly quintessentially Italian food to be made in Austria just seems bizarre. It does explain why they're referred to as "Italian style", however...

Margherita plus... M&S Festive Spiced Streaky Bacon

While I love pizza, I am a conscientious objector to the Margherita. I mean, honestly, what's the point? It's a pizza without any topping (no, cheese is not a topping, it's the default state - one may have extra cheese, but the presence of some cheese is a given). It's pizza for people who don't like pizza.

But it's also an excellent starting point. And, with this Blog going experimental with baking, it was surely only a matter of time before I had the epiphany that led to adding my own choice of toppings to the humble Margherita.

And what better way to begin, as ye Festive Season approacheth, than with Marks & Spencer Festive Spiced Streaky Bacon? The label describes it thusly: "With festive spices of cinnamon, ginger, allspice and nutmeg. Perfect for laying over turkeys or as part of Boxing Day breakfast". While I might query the grammar of the description (spices of? Really M&S?), I cannot deny its veracity. It seems to have been prepared in much the same way as yer average breaded ham - a great chunk of meat is coated, then sliced finely - in that the festive spices appear as but a thin layer around the edge of the bacon. Fret not, however, as the flavour suggests a slightly more extensive form of seasoning once the bacon is cooked.

And, yes, I'd sampled the bacon prior to this pizza experiment. A couple of slices made it into an all-day breakfast I'd prepared the night before. I normally steer clear of streaky bacon just because the proportions of meat to fat are damn near 50:50, and I prefer my meat to have more... well... meat. But the description piqued my curiosity, and I was intrigued enough to give it a try.

Hey, don't knock it - first, I may be experimenting with food, but I ain't stupid; second, the sampling of festive bacon actually helped to inspire this pizza.

Come on now, do I really need to list the ingredients? Oh, why not? Let's get specific...

Ingredients:

• 1 Pizza Express Margherita (shop's own brands would do, but a trusted brand in pizza is preferable)
• 4-5 Rashers M&S Festive Spiced Streaky Bacon
• Nothing Else. Really. Move Along, Please.

Preparation Time: Approx 14 minutes

Tools Required:

• Oh, Good Grief. Really?
• Alright, then... A Pizza Slice. Or a Knife, if you prefer.
  

Process:
How specific do I need to get here? Preheat the oven to 190degrees. Open the Pizza Express Margherita box, remove it from its plastic wrap. Lay out 4 or 5 rashers of the bacon across the pizza, then place the pizza into the oven - being careful to separate the pizza from its polystyrene base beforehand - and cook for about 14 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve when fully cooked.

Did I miss anything? I don't think so... but, hey, let me know if there are any glaring omissions (such as "use oven gloves and exercise caution when placing the pizza in the oven and when removing it. The oven will be hot"... Except I guess I just covered that one...).

See how quick that was, both in preparation time and cooking?

The Results:
Well, lesson #1 in 'How to Make a Margherita Less Boring' was both simple and very successful. Normal bacon can be a little sharp and salty for adding to even the barest of pizzas - the oil from the cheese and the fat from the bacon would tend to make it rather unpleasantly slimey, which is why bacon normally appears on pizza in tiny chunks. This stuff, meanwhile, is subtle of flavour... not especially salty, and the spices serve both to bring out its flavour and supplement it. The effect, upon a pizza as otherwise bland as the Margherita, is nothing short of stunning.

On the downside, even having given this the full, recommended 14 minutes of cooking time, the bacon remained a little underdone for my taste: I prefer the fat to be fairly crispy, and some of it was still positively moist. Breaking the habit of a lifetime, I did not permit this to deter me... and I very much enjoyed this little upgrade.

I do feel, however, that I should apologise for having basically created The Christmas Pizza... I mean, all you'd need to do is add a few choice cuts of turkey, some sliced cocktail sausage and a touch of cranberry sauce, and you're right there.

Iceland Italian Stonebaked Mediterranean Vegetable Pizza

This appears to be a fairly new product, considering I'll often pop into my local Iceland to restock on the simple, freezer-friendly stuff. It looks interesting enough and, for a mere £1.50, I could probably even forgive the usual Iceland trick of using too much tomato purée and not enough cheese... However, this one seems quite well-balanced, and certainly has no shortage of toppings, in the form of peppers (yellow and red), spinach, courgette and red onion. Furthermore, it lays claim not just to the presence of Mozzarella, but of "cheese sauce", whatever that may be.

The blurb on the back describes it thusly:
A real Italian pizza made in Meduno, a small village near Venice in Northern Italy. The dough for this pizza is prepared and left to rest for 6 hours before it is baked traditionally in a stone oven producing a delicious thin and crispy base.

And here, in many ways, is the problem with ready-made pizza: the base is pre-baked. When you go to a restaurant the serves pizza - even the place we have at work - they start with the dough, add the toppings, and slap the thing in the oven in its properly raw state, there to cook for 10-15 minutes. This produces a pizza base that's far fresher - crispy, yet still almost moist inside - than ready-made, pre-baked pizzas can deliver.

But, y'know what? This has to have been one of the best ready-made vegetable pizzas I've had in a long while. All of the toppings survived being frozen with all their flavour both intact and distinct (with the possible exception of the red onion, some of which seemed a little bland). My worry with vegetable toppings on frozen products, particularly low-budget ones, is that they'll just go soft and tasteless in the oven, so top marks to Iceland for this pizza.

Once cooked, the cheese-to-tomato purée ratio did start to look a bit more like Iceland's usual but, in terms of flavour, the whole thing was just right. I do wonder if they'd be better off freezing it with the base raw... but then, since most UK ovens come with wire racks, rather than solid flat surfaces like a proper pizza oven, that probably wouldn't work out so well.

Having eaten it, though, and read the ingredients list, I'm still none the wiser as to what the "cheese sauce" was.

Pizza Double Bill

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be posting a lot of ready-made stuff and a fairly paltry amount of stuff I make myself... Oh well. We can but wait and see.

Well, I could put in some more damned effort while you wait and see but, frankly, after work these days, cooking is the last thing on my mind. This last weekend, I finally got round to washing the dishes that have been stacking up for a couple of weeks.

But that's another story. This one is about Pizza. Specifically...

Dr Oetker Ristorante Pizza - Speciale:
When I said I like my pizza to feature pepperoni, I wasn't kidding... so when I saw a ready-made pizza featuring pepperoni and salami, my belly sent clear signals of a positively romantic interest.

And I really wasn't disappointed. The multi-lingual blurb on the back describes it as "Richly topped with cheese, salami, mushrooms and ham on a crisp, thin base." and this many-tongued expression is no lie. Frequently with ready-made pizza, one finds something or the other is lacking - either there's not enough tomato purée, not enough cheese, or not enough of the gosh-darned topping. This thing has to be the best-balanced ready-made pizza I've had in a long while, and the cooked end result is truly excellent.

I must admit I'm getting better at judging cooking temperatures and times in my fan-assisted oven - generally I can shave off about 10-20degrees, and about 2-5 minutes... and it always helps to keep checking on a pizza - the eye can tell better than a timer when it's ready to serve.

Had I the space, I'd stock up on Dr Oetker's Speciale.

(Dr Oetker) Chicago Town Edge to Edge Thin & Crispy California Cheese Pizza:
I find it curious that the Chicago Town folks have adopted 'Fact*' as part of their advertising slogan. I'm sure there's a bleach or detergent that's currently using it, too... and its vulgar overuse was highlighted by Ricky Gervais's character, David Brent, in The Office.

Anyway... They do actually qualify this 'Fact*' with the explanation/caveat "Product tests proved that Edge to Edge has more topping than any other frozen branded thin and crispy pizza. FACT! (products compared February 2010)" and, yes, I shit you not, "FACT!" - all upper case, and with exclamation mark - is printed on their packaging.

Thing is, this pizza is actually a fair bit smaller than other 'frozen branded thin and crispy pizzas' - something like an inch smaller by diameter. So, when they say it has 'more topping', is that average by area?

Whatever the story, I have to say that this one impressed me, as 'cheese only' pizzas go. I normally find them quite bland, but the interplay between the mozzerella, mature cheddar and provolone was quite pleasant. It all kind of merged into one fairly mild cheesy melange, but I guess that's the whole point of something like this.

It's not necessarily something I'd go looking for specifically in the future, but I may well try the others in the series... I seem to recall seeing a New Orleans Cheese Pizza in the same chiller cabinet, if not more.

Both were very quick to cook, but naturally the one featuring pepperoni was my personal preference.

Tesco Finest: Ham, Garlic Mushroom & Italian Marscapone Pizza

Billed as "a traditional hand stretched stonebaked base inspired from the Naples region of Italy topped with creamy white sauce, garnished with Parmesan & parsley." I would question the (lack of) punctuation in that description, but cannot argue with a full-size pizza that takes only 6-8 minutes to cook (10-12 from frozen), and tastes as good as this.

Frankly, when it comes to pizza, I'm not that imaginitive. Pepperoni is generally what I look for, followed by a decent amount of mozzarella and a fair - but not excessive - amount of tomato purée.

The presentation of this pizza is not great - with only four or five large (6-7cm square) slabs of ham, you're going to get quite a few mouthfuls that are entirely without ham unless you take the time to chop it up and redistribute prior to cooking. Strangely, though, the similarly sparse distribution of the white sauce harms the pizza very little - it melts very quickly, and just runs everywhere. Better still, it congeals very slowly - I'd more or less finished the pizza, and it was only 'thickening' rather than 'set'.

The interplay between the flavours of the main ingredients is quite well-judged: the creaminess of the Marscapone and the white sauce are not in conflict, the ham doesn't taste excessively watered-down, and the mushroom (again, large slabs of) is smooth, yet distinct. The base didn't seem particularly special to me, despite the essay on the back about its preparation, but it's certainly a cut above the likes of Pizza Hut, or the run-of-the-mill supermarket pizza.

Definitely one I'll have again. It would be advantageous to have a hotplate for something like this, to stave off the congealing of the cheese, and I probably need larger plates in general, but this is a very nice pizza.