I think that pizza is probably one of the greatest food inventions (Tom would argue that the sausage is, in fact, the greatest food invention, but now isn’t the time for debate!). With a homemade pizza you can make it as healthy or unhealthy as you like, and it tastes great cold too. We often make pizza if we’re having friends over on a Saturday night – you can prepare it all earlier and it suits all tastes, which is brilliant.

You will need to do a bit of preparation for this one, as you’ll need to make the bread dough and pizza topping in advance. Use my recipe for Low-fat Tomato Pasta Sauce for the pizza topping, and you can use the adapted version of my bread recipe below for the dough (click here for the link to the original bread recipe). I had a bit of help doing this yesterday – thanks to Tom for making the dough and rolling it out!

For the pizza dough

400g strong white bread flour

1 sachet quick yeast

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp mixed herbs (optional)

2 tbsp olive oil

300ml hand hot water (150ml cold topped up with 150ml boiling water)

You will need some tomato sauce to top the pizza, as well as any other toppings – we used chorizo, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella here.

Method

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

2. Add the oil to the water before pouring over the dry ingredients. Mix together until a dough is formed and then knead for five minutes.

3. Leave the dough in the bowl. Wet a clean tea towel with cold water and wring out so that it isn’t dripping, before placing over the bowl. Leave to rise.

4. When the dough has at least doubled in size, ‘knock back’ and knead again for a few minutes.

5. Roll out the dough to fit a large, greased baking tray (use a bit of olive oil to grease the tray). Heat the oven to 220°c/425°F/Gas mark 7 whilst preparing the topping.

6. A couple of ladles of the tomato sauce is usually enough to cover the dough – try to spread it evenly over the dough. Then cover with your choice of topping – we chose chorizo, mushrooms and basil for ours. We put our cheese on top of the other toppings, but you can do whatever you like really! That’s the great thing about pizza!

7. Cook in the oven for 20-25 minutes – keep an eye on it because it can look raw one minute and then be done the next. Serve with some salad (serves 4 people, or 2 people with 2 lunches the next day). Enjoy!

Post updated 24th June 2016.