I know, I know, day 4 and a shot of dinner. Yep – day 1, an out of focus, badly edited shot of the dogs, day 2 – OK though not spectacular, day 3 – a bit yucky and day 4 – dinner. I’m resorting to stuff that would normally get through the” OK, I’ll post it” filter on day 205 or 6 when I’ve been madly busy all day and it’s cold, wet and dark.

BUT in my defence, this pizza is symbolic. (And it subsequently turned out to be delicious.) Some of the lovely long-term pbase folks (who it’s lovely to “see” around since we’ve been back) will know that we moved to the back of beyond in 2005 and confounded it by moving again six months later to a place even more remote. That’s OK in itself but there are some things that you don’t realise how much you’ll miss them until they are out of reach.

For me, these things are:

1. my beloved Spurs
2. a good curry
3. Domino’s pizza

The latter is partly a love of pizza (who doesn’t) and partly the convenience of being able to phone them and order up a pizza when I’m too busy to cook. Unwittingly a good friend of mine helped me to see that being in the woolly wilds didn’t necessarily mean that pizza was now out-of-bounds. She invited us round to her place for a “build your own pizza” night where she’d made bases using her bread machine’s dough setting and provided a load of toppings which you did what you wanted with then bunged in her Aga. The evening was wonderful in every way and gave me the idea that I could do it myself.


Eureka – I have spent the last six years working on perfecting the ultimate dough and red sauce recipes. I think I am getting close. In our house, Friday night is pizza night and so I’m cooking. The dough recipe is a “tinkered with” recipe with adjusted ingredients and proving timings and the red sauce is made from home-grown tomatoes, slow roasted with basil, chilli, garlic and olive oil, zuzzed in the food processor then frozen in ice cube trays for use throughout the winter. We even made a fab discovery on a Jamie Oliver programme that we can make our own home-made butter (from cream) then augment it with home-grown garlic, salt and pepper then again frozen in ice cube trays so that we can have garlic pizza bread while waiting for the pizzas to cook.

I am now consistently getting delicious pizza (and garlic bread) although I am well aware that there is no such thing as perfection and so I still strive for better. This has been assisted by the receipt of my Christmas pressie from David – a granite pizza stone that sits in the oven and pizzas are baked on it. Tonight was its first run for pizza although it was used previously to make a no-knead loaf. I think it passed the test as another step along the way to better pizza.

So, the pic is a pedestrian one of a pizza – who cares – but the story behind the mundane pic is one of trial, more trial, a lot of error and some successes. Now what I really need to get these pizzas that bit better again is a wood-fired oven and I do have a plan for one that’s been fuelled by watching “how to” videos on you-tube. Have concrete mixer, will build is my new motto and that’s the story for another day!

Oh and this pic? Shot in the oven on the pizza stone with oven on full-blast. Studio light under arm pit!