FLOWER POT KITCHEN: WOOD FIRED PIZZA COOKING

15 Sept 2021

WOOD FIRED PIZZA COOKING - GARLIC BREAD

Glorious Garlic Flat Bread Pizza

This is one of those great appetisers and time buying (ie: stress free crowd cooking) for anticipation of the greatest wood fired pizza’s to come when cooking for your family or a crowd with your wood fired oven, I say oven because I cook every thing in our wood oven, slow braised dishes to scrambled eggs to wood fired roasts, tandoori chicken, Yorkshire puddings and of course THE best wood fired pizzas and breads !

I have a great dough recipe I learned in the trade that allows you to prove the dough for 24 hours in the fridge, yes proving in the fridge. This gives the dough a better texture and flavour as the slow prove in 3-6 degrees improves the flavour. This in my world also gives me more freedom of time, as when we through a pizza or wood fired dinner party it really can be quite involved when offering all your guest 20 or so choices of ingredients, this we gave navigated with a great pizza bar of ingredients, all we do is roll out the dough, place them on semolina dusted wood paddles (lots of them) and say Wahoo Go For It, Build Your Own. The only disadvantage is when a pizza dough base is overloaded with fillings it is not so easy to place in the oven or turn! Hence my Dad’s overloaded pizza creations 🤣

Best Dough Recipe

(six portions)

500g 00 caputo flour (Italian)

15g yeast

10g Himalayan sea salt

50g Olive oil

320g room temperature water

Place the flour, yeast, salt, olive oil and water in a large bowl or mixer with a dough hook and combine together, at this point I like to turn out and knead manually for the next 10 minutes, but you can leave this mix with a dough hook in the mixer for 7 minutes. I love working with dough I find kneading very satisfying how the sticky dough becomes smooth and elasticised.

You can divide the dough in to six or leave whole and place in a tray or bowl covered in the fridge to slow prove for 24 hours, even up to 48 hours! When ready to use bring the dough out and leave for one hour to come up to room temperature before rolling out.

Garlic Butter

250g butter room temperature

1 whole blue garlic chopped

1 small bunch fresh parsley chopped

Mix together and generously spread over the pizza dough cook and enjoy.

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LIFE MY PASSION

Welcome to my daily life of cooking, one winters day many years ago my family and I were all inspired by a back to back rainy day of River Cottage this got us to stop talking about and start actually doing, suddenly three weeks later eight vegetable beds were dug, greenhouse erected and our first vegetables were propagating, this was the start to raising and growing our own food, our fabulous son Oscar changed our path in life which lead us to sell our small thriving restaurant of 10 yrs and to start our new life (Terrifying!) a life of the self sufficient in touch with nature and seasons, taking a step back and looking forward to a slower change of pace and making the most of every moment.

My passion for cooking was stronger than ever and having time at home with Oscar I found I had a new direction and I was no longer striving for perfection, I was suddenly very passionate for the enjoyment of the other side of food, something I had not realised, being the Chef/Cook and every other duty of your own small restaurant made me see that I never actually took time to cook what I wanted!

So there I was muddy boots and hands digging deep in more than one sense and I found myself transported back in time to where everyone grew some of their own food, it is a wonderful world with a real sense of achievement and loss, Slugs Snails and Caterpillars! But thats another story! Childhood memories of summers when I lived with my grand parents reminded me of so much that I had learnt about the make do and mend generation that I had forgotten.

Now as a family we love our free wild food days where we gather what nature has provided, have gone from being mini mini garden urban small holders, who did raised pigs at home because we could not wait to find land and supporting ourselves from our garden to now owning a very small farm that allows us to grow more vegetables for the whole of our family and neighbours, raise our own gorgeous Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, (Sausages!) and pets! Dorset Down sheep, chickens for eggs and pet goats! Suddenly having large quantities of produce started to wake up the Cook in me!

The Cook was awake that part of me that wants to cook for the masses and I found myself setting up Flowerpot Kitchen, a Farmers Market Stall, I wanted to use our honest raised meats and make old fashioned pork pies, rabbit pies and game pies from the local game keeper along with old fashioned techniques and the best hot water crust pastry. This in turn grew to a small cottage industry from home weekly supplying three farm shops and a deli along with also attending three farmers markets A few years later there came a time when my son Oscar's health changed and it was an easy decision to stop.

I still hold the occasional pop up 40 seater restaurant or gourmet lunch which we do for local charities for the love of sharing food and to remind that Cook in me why I love our go slower self sufficient life!

So here I am sitting amoung the vegetables watching the chickens loving that every season nature teaches me something new and that nature is in charge! She has taught me to just go with it and grow. Give it a try from a tray of salad on your windowsill to a few tomato plants it all counts.