Christmas Pizza

Hosting with the Mosting

This is the ultimate crowd pleaser and a staple at any buffet table or part of a cosy night in.

Serves: 4 (with either larger pizzas or more mini pizzas)

Prep time for all ready ingredients and dough: 20 mins

Dough make time: 2 hours

Ingredients

The Base

We used shop bought pizza dough, but you can simply make your own below:

• 500g ’00’ flour, or strong plain flour, plus extra for dusting or gluten-free strong plain flour

• 1 tsp salt

• ½ tsp dried yeast

• 400ml warm water

• oil, for greasing

The Toppings per pizza

• a handful of cooked turkey meat torn and shredded

• 1 red onion finally chopped

• oregano liberally sprinkled

• a handful of roughly torn fresh Basil

• 1 red pepper

• salt and pepper

• a healthy splash of passata sauce

• cranberries - as many as you like

The Cheese

• 1 or 2 handfuls of grated mozzarella for a stringy melted bubbled effect, or any leftover cheese grated up will do .

Preparation

The Dough Base

1. Put the flour and salt in the bowl and mix the yeast into the water.

2. We use a mixer with dough hook, but using a bowl and your hands is fine too (for the work out!). Either way, mix the dry ingredients together before adding the warm water. The warm water will activate the yeast. Mix on a medium setting and pretty quickly the ingredients will come together to form a ball of dough. If it is sticking add more flour, a little at a time. If you don’t have that mixer, and you are doing this by hand, it will take about 10 mins to kneed. The aim to make slightly sticky dough, so hold off overflouring too much.

3. Scoop the dough out the bowl and make into a rough ball. Wrap the ball loosely in cling film or place in a bowl and cover with a tea towel. If it is super sticky, put a little oil on your hands to handle it…not too much though. Now place in a warmish spot - by a radiator, by the roaring Christmas fire or under the wood burner is perfect. The trick is make sure that the dough is warm but not too hot. You will see that in a couple of hours that the dough will have grown in size. If you are not using it straight away, you can store it in the fridge after this point. Otherwise if you are using it now, here is where the work out starts.

4. Take off the cling film and punch back the dough and kneed it back on a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into equal sized balls for each pizza. The size at this stage will determine the width of your pizzas, we made smaller ones, to make more pizzas, and then more choice of toppings.

5. On a floured surface, stretch and flatten the dough by hand making it into a round shape. Using an upturned bowl is good for this too.

6. Next put your pizza base on a non stick tray or greaseproof paper and allow to sit in a warm place for 20 mins. The base will harden and rise a little more. You can get your toppings ready at this stage.

Assembly

1. Toppings should be ready to go. Passata is first. We pour a decent splash of it across the top of the base and then use the back of a spoon to push around the pizza. If you like tomato you can use more. Liberally sprinkle oregano over the passata. It gives it a really Italian taste. Add your pepper and salt on top too. Firstly put your red onion on top, then scatter the turkey, chopped red pepper, cranberries after and then finally throw on the torn basil leaves. Lastly the mozzarella cheese, be as free with this as you like. We like a decent cheesy topping, then drizzle with olive oil.

2. Place in the oven Gas Mark 6 / 200C / 400F for around 15 to 20 minutes. Take the pizza out when the cheese is bubbling and brown on top.