Like all the best ideas, it’s so simple you can’t believe you didn’t think of it before. Rosemary! We’d said "Hey people, give us your ideas for new flavoured olive oils we should be making.”
You rose up. You spoke with one voice. That voice said “Rosemary, please.” We said, “Respect people, bloomin good idea.”
So we collected up our freshly harvested olives, sourced a few crates of the best Italian rosemary, hand plucked its leaves, then crushed the whole caboodle together under huge granite millstones.
And then we pimped up this pizza.
Prep Time 2 Hours
Serves 4
Cook Time 2 Hours
Difficulty Easy
Ingredients
- White bread flour – 350g/12oz
- Salt – 5g/0.2oz
- Tepid water – 200ml/7 fl oz
- Dried yeast – 7g/0.25oz
- Rosemary olive oil – 1 tbsp
- Onion – 1 medium
- Garlic clove – 1
- Chopped plum tomatoes – 400g/14oz tin San Marzano if possible
- Dried oregano – 2 tsp
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Sugar, salt and pepper to taste
- Rosemary olive oil to drizzle - For the topping
- Buffalo mozzarella – 125g/4.4oz ball torn into pieces
- Taleggio – 50g/1.8oz
- Courgette – 1
- Sliced unsmoked pancetta (optional) – 50g/1.8oz
- Rosemary – a few sprigs
Method
- First put the yeast in the water, stir and let it stand for 15 minutes to activate. Then make the dough by sifting the flour and salt together on a work surface and make a well in the centre. Add the water and the oil to the well in the flour and mix together with your hands. When it all comes together knead it for 6-10 minutes until you have a strong elastic dough (or if you have a mixer with a dough hook, put all the ingredients in the bowl and knead for 6 minutes on a medium setting). Allow the dough to prove for 1½ to 2 hours, until it has doubled in size and is springy to the touch.
- Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce – gently fry the onions in extra virgin olive oil, till soft, but with no colour. Add the tomatoes, the crushed garlic and slowly simmer it until thickened. Then add the dried oregano, and season with a little sugar, salt and pepper to taste. You may have more sauce than you need, so don’t think you need to use it all on the pizza as you could overload it.
- Heat the oven to 240oC/475oF/GM9. Knock back the dough and divide it into 3 balls, and roll them out to ½cm thick. Lie them on a lightly floured baking tray (you might have to do this in batches, depending on your oven), then spread with tomato sauce and drizzle a little rosemary olive oil over the crusts. Add the toppings you wish. If you want to make a pizza bianca without the tomato sauce, just drizzle the base with oil before adding your toppings. Cooking time depends on the thickness of your base, but you want the cheese to be melted and the crust to be browned.