Pizza

September 18, 2001

Men make abysmal patients. The Spouse is no exception. He gets a cold and it is "an extreme case of flu." He sags about the house, moaning, groaning and sniffling.

Divine retribution hit last week and he actually did get the flu. Real flu. Aches, pains, temperatures, sweats, weakness, lack of appetite, loss of taste and smell. All that and cough, cough, cough.

I might sound like a miserable, unsympathetic wife. I am. I am expected to soldier on through my near death experiences, shopping, lugging home the groceries, cooking.

One of the brighter aspects of The Spouse's illness has been a bit of a respite from cooking. No point in making food for someone totally incapable of eating. Time, instead, for solitary feasting on chocolate biscuits, ice cream, crumpets, cheese and crackers. My one guilty foray into providing tasty morsels for the ailing resulted in rather a glut of pizza that only served to prove to elder son and me that The Spouse is normally the major consumer in the house. Without his assistance, we barely made an impression on the two large pizzas I made.

Homemade pizza is a breeze if you own a bread making machine. Set it to manual, throw in the ingredients and press play and you're halfway there.

Most machines have a manual option where they will process the dough, doing all the mixing, kneading and proving and then beep when it's your turn to take over, pull out the dough and complete the process.

If you don't have a bread machine, mix the yeast and sugar in a little warm water and set aside for 10 minutes, then mix all ingredients together, knead for 10 minutes, set aside in a greased bowl for about an hour, punch down, divide in two, pat into a couple of large circles and decorate as per recipe.

Pizza Dough

3 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons dried yeast granules
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/4 cups warm water

Place in bread maker, set to manual and push start.

When the machine beeps that it's your turn, remove the dough and divide in two. Roll or pat out into two large circles.

Spread with pizza sauce or a flavoured tomato paste mix ( I used paste flavoured with olives and basil). Spread over the fillings of your choice. On one pizza I used marinated mussels, shrimps, anchovies and char-grilled red peppers, and on the other olives and chunks of hot sausage. I then added to both tomato wedges, torn basil leaves and a sprinkling of pre-grated mixed cheeses.

Bake in a pre-heated 230 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

Yum - and, as it turned out, still pretty good the next day