La Pizza Rossa

One of my absolute all time favourite wouldn't be without cookbooks is 'Apples for Jam' by Tessa Kiros. If you look back though the archives you will see that it already features heavily on this blog (like oat biscuits, chocolate bread, raspberry ripple ice cream, jam shortbread, chocolate hazelnut balls, yoghurt ice cream). I have bookmarked almost every page with a must try sticker.

So when I saw that the theme for this month's Hay Hay it's Donna Day was pizza (hosted this month by 80 breakfasts) my mind immediately jumped to page 53. La Pizza Rossa to be exact. I have been wanting to try this like forever.

I am ever so glad I did, because it was fabulous.

The base is a thick, very soft pillow of bread. It is dead simple to make. As you can see here, the hardest part is getting the dough to separate from your fingers as it is very soft and sticky.



I used fresh yeast and next time I will use slightly less. The bread did have a yeasty taste. This wasn't noticeable with the tomato and cheese. But I think it would be an improvement. I generally have this issue with all European recipes. Australian yeast must just be stronger or something.

If it is has a downside, it's that it takes a fair bit of time. Not work time, but sitting around rising time. The dough has to rise three times all together. I actually wondered if I could just cut the first one out. I might try it next time.

There is nothing easier than the tomato sauce. Tessa's recipe is for just plain tomato pizza.


But she does suggest some optional extras. Really, this pizza is quite big so you can have a variety of flavourings in one tray. I added some chopped bacon and meltingly soft fontina cheese to half and left the other half plain. Both were delicious, but I just can't go past cheese and bacon. So, so good.



La Pizza Rossa
(adapted from Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros)

Dough

1 3/4 cups warm water
20gm of fresh yeast or 10gm of dry yeast
1 tspn honey
1 tbspn olive oil
600 gm of plain flour
1 1/2 tspn salt

Put the water, yeast, honey, oil and 3 handfuls of flour in a bowl and mix. Cover and leave for 20 minutes or until it is foamy. Mix in the rest of the flour and the salt. Knead with a dough hook for 4-5 minutes.

Cover and leave for 1 1/2 hours or until the dough is well risen.

Lighly oil a 28x38x4cm tin. Punch down the dough and spread evenly over the base of the tin. Cover and leave to rise for 45 minutes or until puffy. Carefully dimple the dough with your fingers and gently spread the tomato sauce over the top.

Feel free to add whatever other toppings you want. I think pretty much anything would work.

Bake in a 180C oven for about 20 minutes.

Sauce

800gm of tinned diced tomatoes
4 tbspn olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tspn salt
handful of basil leaves

Heat the oil and garlic, add the tomatoes, torn up basil leaves and the salt. Cook for about 15 minutes until the sauce thickens.