Sourdough Pizza

I have adopted this recipe from Jamie Oliver's book 'Jamie's Italy'. I love this book and love Jamie, he's got so many delicious recipes, so here goes:

Makes: 4 large (or 6 medium) pizzas

Crust:

300 g white organic stone ground strong flour

150 g white sourdough starter (same as here but made with white organic all purpose flour)

1 tbsp raw organic honey

1 tsp with a hip unrefined sea salt

150 g lukewarm filtered water and grass-fed organic raw milk (50 / 50)

Toppings (all ingredients organic):

1) Salami, courgette, basil, tomato and mozzarella, black pepper and sea salt

2) fried up unsmoked streaky bacon, sauteed onion, mozzarella, sweet pepper, tomatoes, black pepper and sea salt

3) garlic, parsley, black pepper and sea salt (''garlic bread'')

4) kids' pizzas with organic no-poo or home-made ketchup (my son doesn't like the tomato sauce), grass-fed pork chipolata sausages or any other organic sausages of your kids' liking, sweet peppers, sea salt

or any topping of your liking

Basic Tomato Sauce:

2 midium organic tomatoes

1 clove organic garlic

bunch organic basil leaves (trimmed)

grass-fed organic raw butter

sea salt and black pepper

First you need to make the crust. Bring all the ingredients together for the crust and knead for about 10 minutes by hand. Place the dough into the slightly floured dusted bowl and cover with cling film. Leave to ferment overnight or at least for 8 hours.

In the morning, the next day, knead the dough for about 1-2 minutes, cover in a bowl and leave for 2-3 hours to proof.

About half an hour before you want to bake your pizzas heat the oven with the baking stone inside to 250⁰C. I use my baking stone, but you can use any baking tray.

At the same time start preparing your toppings and tomato sauce. For tomato sauce you need to heat the frying pan with some butter, slightly fry chopped garlic for a bout 1 minute, then add some chopped basil leaves and add tomatoes (to remove the skins simply grate the tomato on the carrot grater), season with black pepper and sea salt. Simmer this for 15 minutes on the medium heat to reduce some of the water from tomatoes.

While the tomato sauce is simmering you can prepare your toppings for quick and easy application. All the quantities are up to your taste. Chop thinly courgettes, tomatoes, fry up  streaky bacon with salt and pepper, cut and fry chipolata sausages, cut a small onion into thin rings and saute in some butter with a bit of sea salt and a bit of brown sugar or rapadura until caramelised, finely cut up sweet peppers into long strings, cut up mozzarella or tear it into chunks, wash some basil leaves and parsley,  grind some sea salt and black pepper. I usually place each ingredient into a separate little bowl for convenience.

Now you are ready to actually make pizzas. Take your dough and divide it into 4 (or 6) pieces, set aside 3 (5) of them and roll one thinly (1-2 mm) on lightly dusted surface into almost round shape and place it on the parchment paper (in order to easily transfer it to the baking stone I place the parchment paper onto a cutting board). Apply the tomato sauce, toppings and bake for 10 - 15 minutes depending on your oven until golden and crispy.