pitta pizza party - 5/6/2014

Sometimes in order to get people to read the stuff I write about dough with tomatoes on, I post the link to new blog entries on my Facebook. Last time I did this - for the pizza bagels post a few weeks ago - I was LITERALLY INUNDATED (four people commented) with suggestions for the next bread I should turn into a pizza. The victor was pitta bread, and as I was a pitta pizza novice until last night, my pals Hector and Lu came over to give me a hand in undertaking this complex transformation of mere bread to delicious meal. Essentially this was the pizza equivalent to the bit in She's All That when Evan Rachel Wood takes her glasses off, shedding her plain Jane exterior, and wears a tight dress in order 2 fulfil her destiny as a complete betty. Pitta pizza is also a betty.

So first of all we started by making some pizza sauce. Same ingredients as the ones for the sauce in the bagel post, except we added oregano too. It tasted good.

Then Hector, as the resident pitta pizza expert (his mum makes them for him when he goes home from uni in the holidays), performed the most crucial part of the operation - carefully slicing the pittas down the side so you end up with two flat bits per pitta, rather than two stubby halves like usual, say if you were putting the pitta in the toaster.

Hector was super stoked to be cutting some pitta bread. It is his calling.

Then we chopped some veg (I think we had mushrooms, peppers, red onion, black olives, courgettes, chillies and sundries tomatoes), spread the sauce over the pittas which were lined up on baking trays wrapped in foil, topped them (I just had veg, Hector and Lu also had torn mozzarella which seemed like a cool touch), and put them in the oven to bake for around ten minutes at about 160 degrees (my oven gets very hot very quickly though, so maybe adjust that for your own appliances). But not before I had the chance to take some incredibly obnoxious A Level Art-lookin' photos:

What I liked about pitta pizzas as opposed to the other breads I have experimented with in the past was that they give you room for lots of toppings, which is something that bagels and crumpets just cannot do. Also, their thinness is gr8 if you're about that crispy base life (I am), because as long as you cook them correctly in the oven (i.e. don't let them burn), they'll crisp up really nicely so that you get a p satisfying crunch when you bite into them. They are also surprisingly substantial, in that they're filling (we had these for dinner, but we did use Tesco's large pittas rather than regular sized ones) and also that they're real sturdy - as you can see they have quite a lot of toppings on them and they held up to that pressure well. I think pitta bread would do well on The Cube. When they came out of the oven, they looked like this:

which is, clearly, completely dope. 

So yeah, those are pitta pizzas, and they are probably the best bread I have Queer Eye For The Straight Guy'd so far. They taste great - the base is crispy and the toppings we used were all delicious and didn't make the bread soggy or droopy or anything. Making them was also a really fun thing to do with palz (shout out to Hector and Lucy for coming to help out) so I would recommend that u have a pitta pizza party of yr own sometime soon.

Pizza rating: 9/10

'homemade' - 16/4/14

I've put the word homemade in the title of this post in those dickish little quote marks because technically, this pizza was more 'home-assembled' than actually crafted by my own tiny hands over a roaring fire or any of that shite. I used a Napolina pizza base and Tesco tomato and herb pizza sauce, as well as some frozen and fresh veggies, in order to craft the culinary sensation you see above, immortalised 4ever (- The Veronicas) by my shit iPhone 4 camera.

I will start my ~review~ with the base. I was rly into this base, but I think that is mainly because I expected it to be ranker than it actually was. Instead it was a pretty nice surprise, and had crispy edges and a bottom that didn't sag despite a fair few toppings which is something I have found in the past with other pre-made pizza bases. Would have enjoyed a little more crispness underneath but otherwise I would actually really recommend these if assembling yr own 'za is something you enjoy (also pretty sure that they're vegan so even better - the box says they are made with margarine but seems to imply that it's a vegetable oil based one rather than a dairy one. fyi.)

The Tesco sauce was also pretty good, but pretty basic. I feel like you could very easily make something similar with tomato puree, passata and some herbs, but because I obviously could not be arsed to do that, this sauce was a dope stand in. I would give a shout out in particular to its consistency, which was p perfect for the purpose. Alliteration.

Finally, I would point out that with this particular pizza I decided to go cheeseless (a shocking admission from a pizza purist) and it was actually really delicious. The flavours/textures of the veg (I used sweetcorn, red peppers and olives) were definitely sharper than I think they would have been with cheese, which would have made this quite little pizza a bit too busy. Would definitely recommend an attempt at cheeseless 2 those who haven't tried it because it is an incredibly pleasant change.  

Overall this was cool because putting the pizza together/choosing exactly what toppings I wanted was a p fun thing to do. Maybe now you too will assemble your own pizza. I hope I have inspired u. Thank u.

Pizza rating: 7/10