Pizza with rosemary, olives and rocket

We love every kind of pizza, even with more savoury toppings… and we absolutely adore making as much noise as possible throwing the dough!

Fresh from the garden: rosemary, rocket, onion, garlic, marjoram, olives
Recipe source: Melissa
Serves: 8 or 24 tastes 

What to do:

• Preheat the oven to 220C.

For the tomato sauce:

• Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic, reserving half of the garlic for the topping.
• Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the frying pan & gently cook the onion and garlic until translucent but not brown.
• Open the tin of tomato and add to the frying pan with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper.
• Wash, dry and pick the marjoram and thyme. Roughly chop then add to the tomatoes.
• Simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until quite reduced.

For the topping: 

• Wash the rosemary stalk and wipe dry. Strip the leaves and chop quite small.
• Pit the olives, press the garlic clove then combine with the rosemary and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a small bowl.
• Open the tub of bocconcini and cut each ball into 3 or 4 slices.
• Wash and spin the rocket dry and then reserve in another large bowl.
• Grate the parmesan and reserve in a small bowl.

Assembling the pizza:

• Scatter some flour on the workbench, divide the dough into four and roll to form four thin ovals– you will fit two pizzas side-by-side on one oven tray.
• Flour the trays first and then assemble the ovals onto the trays.
• Usingthe metal spoons, swirl a couple of spoonfuls of tomato sauce onto the pizza bases, spreading so that they become totally covered with a clean border.
• Layer the bocconcini on top, spoon on the garlicky olives, then slide the pizza trays into the oven.
• Wash and dry the wooden chopping boards and set them out ready.

 Baking the pizza:

• Bake the pizzas for about 12 minutes or until the edges are very crusty and the cheese is bubbling.
• Use this time to make the dough for the next class if needed.
• You may want to slip the pizza off the tray onto the rack for the last few minutes, so that you get a really crusty base.
• Once the pizzasare done, transfer them to the wooden boards using the wide egg lifter.
• Cut the pizzas in half first, and then each half into squares for each plate.
• Lift onto serving plates and sprinkle with the rocket and parmesan.
• Eat!

Notes: Where does pizza come from? What other sort of vegetables could you use in a pizza? What sort of other pizza could we make? What other cheeses could we use?