Roman Street Pizza - deep and delicious

Thick fluffy bread dough topped with infused passata and whatever toppings you like - easy party food

Roman Street Pizza (vegetarian optionally)
 
You’ll also find this recipe on my Summer of Six menu, from Rome to Rouen – have a look at the other recipes on the menu if you’re thinking about entertaining outside.

Girls’ trip to Rome – and to the best pizza place in the city. We ate standing up outside; quick fast food, coming out of the kitchen continuously on sizzling trays, cut into slabs, thrown onto paper plates and gobbled at speed. Roman street pizza is different from Napolitan – it’s thicker, fluffy and more bready. Highly satisfying to eat and to make.

Perfect food for kids, great for parties, easy for school holiday or working at home lunchtimes. Adaptable for all diets and one of the healthiest fast meals, who doesn’t love a home made pizza?

Pizza keeps and re-heats so well that it’s worth making a larger quantity than you need on the day, and somehow dough comes out better done in a bigger batch than tiny ones.
 
Makes 10-12 portions, 2 roasting trays full.

Timings: 30 minutes initial preparation, then 90 minutes prove, then 10 minutes work and another 90 minutes prove, then 20 minutes to cook - about 5-6 hours altogether.

For the dough:

• 500g strong white bread flour
• 500g plain flour (the normal baking flour)
• 20g salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 14g instant yeast (2 of the little packets if that’s how you get your yeast)
• 40ml vegetable oil – you can use olive or rape oil
• 600ml warm water

 

• Topping: 500ml good passata, infused for an hour with a clove of garlic (peeled but not crushed) and a sprig of basil or oregano or marjoram.
• Mozzarella, torn into shreds
• 300g cheddar, grated
• At your choice:  sliced fresh tomatoes, sliced fresh red onion, sliced fresh peppers, sliced bottled artichokes, small pieces of sundried tomatoes in oil.  You can add anchovies, parma ham, chorizo or whatever you like.

At least 5 hours before you want to eat, start your dough.

Mix all the dough ingredients and turn out onto your worktop to knead. Knead well for about 5 minutes and then leave the dough under a bowl on your worktop for about 10 minutes. Knead again for 5 minutes. You will have a shiny, springy dough which you can already see starting to fluff.

Leave to prove covered in a warm place until roughly doubled in size – about 90 minutes to 2 hours depending on the temperature.

Prepare your tins – I use metal roasting trays or deep square cake tins to cook this. Grease each tin and line with greaseproof paper on the bottom.

Take it out of the bowl, knock it back but don’t knead it much, then put it into your prepared tins, stretching it so that it fills the tin about 2cm deep.

Leave covered in a warm place to rise again. I like to put the tins into a big plastic bag which you blow up at the neck and then seal with a clip. This keeps the dough protected from draughts and happy in its work. At this stage, you can play with the timings – if you want to leave it to rise more slowly, just leave it in a cooler place. You should leave it for about another 90 minutes in a warm place at least, and it will again double in size and become very puffed up.

About 30 minutes before you are ready to cook, start to heat your oven to 240°C. You need to give it good time to warm up so the whole oven is hot – like a real pizza oven. Of course, if you have a real pizza oven, fire it up!

Remove the garlic and the basil from the passata.

Get the tins of pizza dough and handle them carefully so as not to depress the dough.

Carefully spread the passata all over the top of each pizza dough, right to the edge.

Whack them straight into the oven for 10-15 minutes until the passata is starting to crust round the edges.

Bring them out, and scatter on your other toppings. I would recommend not too much fresh tomato, as it is quite liquid and you don’t want the dough getting soggy with the juice. These pizzas are not supposed to be too deeply topped, so try not to go overboard.

Back in the oven for 10-15 minutes to melt the cheese and crisp the toppings.

Bring them out and let them cool for just a few minutes before portioning and serving.