The no-messing frying-pan pizza

“If I had my way, I’d wear pizza like a warming poncho. I’d bathe in its molten cheesiness. I’d introduce its name into the English vocabulary to mean ‘rad, awesome, brilliant’ and use it in everyday conversation. ‘Hey, DJ BBQ, how was your weekend?” “Man, it was fucking pizza! The weather was pizza!” I’m an inch away from shedding a tiny tear as I write this, thinking about a pizzaless world.

“Luckily, that can never happen. With this recipe, pizza is always right around the corner with this assemble-on-the-hob circle of radonkulousness. OK, so you’ve gotta plan ahead a bit to get the fresh dough ready, but that’s the hard part. After that, you’re seconds from greatness on a plate. These are my favourite toppings, but you know the score: do what the hell you wanna do.

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The recipe

Preparation time: overnight for the dough, 15 mins cooking

Ingredients for the dough

• 450g room temperature water
• 1 sachet of fast-action yeast
• 500g plain flour
• 200g strong white flour
• 2tsp fine sea salt
• 2tbsp honey
• Olive oil
• 100g semolina (to scatter in pan)

For the sauce base

• 1 chopped onion
• Salt
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 tin of passata or chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp of dried oregano
• Freshly chopped basil
• Pepper
• A heavy-based frying pan/skillet

For the toppings

• Grated mozzarella
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• Olives
• A handful of sliced mushrooms
• 1 chopped onion
• Sliced pepperoni

Method

Mix the dough ingredients in a bowl, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. Place in a bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and allow to rise until it doubles in size.

Now you need to ‘knock it back’ by folding it in on itself repeatedly. There’s enough dough here for stacks of pizzas, so divide into palm-sized balls and allow it to prove again.

For the tomato sauce, fry the onion in oil for a couple of minutes, but do not brown. Add the salt and garlic for a minute, then the tomatoes, oregano, basil and pepper for 10 minutes. Now, whack on the grill.

Use your hands or a rolling pin to mould your dough into a round. Sprinkle semolina on the base of the medium heat pan, then place in your dough. Add a spoon of tomato sauce and your toppings until the base is golden. Grill until cooked through.

From the May 2015 issue of FHM India.