Preparation time: 45 minutes. Makes 6 small pizzas about 10.5 cm in diameter or one large one
Ingredients:
| 225 g | Flour |
| 1 tsp | Baking powder |
| 1/4 tsp | Salt |
| 4 tbsp | Oil |
| 4 tbsp. | Sugar Water, room temperature |
| 400 ml | Pasta sauce, tomato |
| 150 g | Cheese |
Toppings: Mozzarella, peppers, spinach, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, Italian herbs, coriander leaves (and for those of you who are not veggie: any kind of cooked meat or fish)
Method:
Prepare your toppings first. Since the pizza will not be going in the oven your toppings won't cook very well. There are two things you can do to prevent a disaster. Either cut your vegetables very thinly so that they cook quickly (and use vegetables that you could eat raw) or cook your vegetables quickly before hand. You could just stir fry them or grill them very quickly. If you do use meat you will have to cook it first, you could use left overs and crumble, or cut, the meat/fish up.
Sift the dry ingredients together and make a well in the middle. Pour in the 2 tbsp. of oil and 4 tbsp. water and mix together to form a hard dough.
You might need to add some extra water depending on the type of flour that you use but the dough should be soft but not soggy. Knead it until it is smooth and then roll it out on to a board. Make the dough as thin as you possibly can without having any holes in it.
When you fry the pizzas the dough will expand due to the baking powder making it much thicker. My initial attempts gave me a dough that was too thick. It was tasty, and we ate it all up, but it was very filling and did not look pretty. I then used a large round cookie cutter to cut the dough into shape. Alternatively you could make it into small balls and then either roll it out, or just press it into shape in your hand.
Put 1 tbsp. of oil into your frying pan and fry gently for 5 minutes or until the base is cooked and slightly brown.
Turn the dough out of the frying pan. Put in the rest of the oil and reheat it. Flip the dough and put it back in the pan. Quickly put your sauce onto the pizza, don't go too close to the edges so prevent the sauce from dripping into the hot oil and making a mess. Then put the other toppings on. Finally sprinkle the cheese on top. Now if you happen to be somewhere in the world where you cannot just crack open a bottle of pasta sauce (or it is too expensive to do so) there are some options. You can make a pasta sauce out of fresh tomatoes or out of tomato puree. I have recipes for both of these, they are eiter in my head or somewhere on a piece of paper. I'm pretty sure that the one with tomato puree is in my head because I made it last time I was in Sri Lanka. It is just going to take a while for me to figure out the proportions. The recipe using fresh tomatoes .... well it might be a while before I dig it out!!
Then cover the frying pan with a lid and fry until the cheese has melted. If you don't have a lid you can cover the top with aluminium foil or once the dough is cooked you can put the pizza under the grill to melt the cheese.
Serve the pizza hot or cold. The fried base tastes really good if you use a lot of oil because you basically have something deep fried!
Enjoy!
