We, The Gourmet Seven are back with a bang and from this month on it is only going to get better with a few more foodie friends joining us. This month we chose to cook some gourmet party food from the BBC Good Food site and I chose this Pizza recipe as I was sure that my kids would love it very much. After all what is a party without a Pizza, right. It came out fabulous but of course I had to make some marked changes to the dough as I do not get Strong White flour and fast action yeast at my place.
And if you check out the original recipe, it mentioned to add the topping (raw) to the baked pizzas and serve them straight away. I was pretty sure that it would not go well with my kids as they would quip it is like having a salad on a pizza. So instead of the main topping being tomatoes, I cut down on that and added mushrooms which made a welcome change. It was such a pity that I did not have fresh basil as well. Otherwise this Pizza would have been truly Gourmet in every aspect.
Want to enjoy pizza but don’t like this combination of Garlic and mushroom, no problem, just check out the Homemade Veggie Pizza and Braided Pizza Bread and have fun.
For the Pizza base:
For the Topping:
For the Pizza Base:
1. Place the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl. Heat water and milk together to lukewarm temperature (115 Deg F approx) and not hot.
2. Pour this over the flour mixture and make a smooth dough. The dough will be sticky, add oil and work it into the dough by kneading for 5-7 mins. It will become springy to your touch.
3. Place the dough in an oiled bowl. Smear oil all over dough and cover it with a damp cloth. Let it rest for 1 hour to double in size.
4. After 1 hour, punch the doubled up dough to let the air out and knead for 2 – 3 minutes. Divide the dough equally into 2 balls.
5. Lightly flour a surface and with the help of a rolling pin, roll out both the dough balls into a round shape to the size you want your pizza to be. Prick the top of the pizza all over with a toothpick.
6. Put the pizzas on a baking sheet and keep it ready. If your oven can hold only one just prepare 1 pizza and prepare the other one after baking the first one.
For the Topping:
7. Melt the butter in a bowl and add crushed garlic to it. Spread this equally over both the pizzas.
8. In another bowl mix together thinly sliced mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, olive oil, sugar, lemon juice and Italian seasoning. Divide into 2 portions.
9. Preheat the oven to 220 C / 425 F. Bake for 5 Minutes.
10. Take out the half baked pizza and evenly spread one portion of the topping all over the pizza and top further with grated cheese.
11. Place the topped pizza and bake further for 10 minutes. Repeat for the other pizza likewise.
12. Serve piping hot.
1. In case if you are using Active dry yeast, use the same quantity but proof it before adding.
2. The original recipe called for Balsamic vinegar to be added to the topping but as I do not get it here, I replaced it with lemon juice and sugar.
3. If you do not have lemon juice, use 1/4 tsp of white vinegar instead.
4. Oven timings will vary accordingly.
This is off to “The Gourmet Seven” and you can see the previous Gourmet recipes here and want to know what the other Gourmets namely Anusha, Anamika, Kaveri, Sangeetha,Vardhini and Veena are rustling up. Check out the links to know more. Stay tuned to find out what we cook for next month...
Labels: Baked Goodies, Breads, Eggless Baking, Microwave Convectional Recipes, Mushroom Recipes, Snacks, The Gourmet Seven, Yeast
