Recipe: Garlic cheese pizza bread

Here is the finished product. The kids grabbed a few slices before I could even take a photo.

I love to make pizza. I stew the tomatoes for the sauce, then leave them on a low heat for a few hours with a mix of herbs and spices before finally adding them to the top of the dough.

I make the dough from scratch and have a great recipe that is fairly easy and includes paprika and black pepper.

The first weekend of January I really wanted pizza. We’d just got back from holiday and didn’t have much in the house apart from a packet of pre-grated mozzarella cheese and, I assumed, lots of white bread flour.

My wife went out to the supermarket while I stayed home with the kids. While she was gone I looked in the cupboard to get the bread flour ready before I started stewing tomatoes.

All I could find was a quarter of a bag of bread flour. I went down to the store cupboard to see if we had any there, none. So I called my wife “sorry I can’t get any at the supermarket, there is nothing not he shelves,” she said.

So no pizza. A quarter of a bag of flour isn’t close to enough. It will make one good size (12") pizza, but for a family of six pizza obsessives it just won’t cut it.

Instead I decided to make another staple the whole family enjoys; Quorn pieces in a chilli tomato marinade served on a bed of rice.

But the quarter bag of flour and the bag of mozzarella cheese were bugging me. I didn’t want to make a single pizza as that wasn’t fair, so instead I decided to make a garlic bread. Do I go for the traditional baguette style or pizza bread? Pizza bread of course.

My wife seemed to enjoy it and the kids have already asked me to make more, so in case you want to try it yourself here is the recipe.

Garlic cheese pizza bread

Time: 1:15 prep | 20 mins cooking — Makes: one 12" pizza

Ingredients (dough)

250g white strong bread flour (plus more for rolling and prep)

2.5g dried yeast powder (third of a 7g sachet)

2 tbsp olive oil

130ml lukewarm water

2 tsp golden granulated sugar

1 tsp salt

Ingredients (topping)

100g melted butter

4 tsp olive oil

30g garlic granules or half crushed garlic

100g grated mozzarella cheese

Method (stage one)

1. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the middle.
2. Add the yeast, sugar and olive oil to the water, stir and leave for one minute to settle.
3. Pour the water mixture into the well in the flour and stir with a wooden spoon until sticky.
4. Get your hands into the bowl and kneed until it becomes a consistent ball, you may need to add extra flour to achieve the effect, it shouldn’t be sticking to your hands.
5. Clean the bowl, put some flour at the bottom, put your dough ball on the flour, add a bit more flour to the top, cover with a tea towel and leave to stand for about an hour (it’s ok to leave as long as you need, but an hour is minimum).

Method (stage two)

1. Put the ball on a floured surface, kneed a bit more, then roll out into a rough 12" circle and put it on a pizza tray.
2. Melt your butter, add the olive oil, cover with the garlic stir it all together and pour over the the pizza and put the cheese on top. It will look like a pool but don’t worry, it is supposed to. It will cook into the dough. My son asked if I was making soup when he saw mine.
3. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, bring it out, cut it (I cut mine into rectangular slices) and serve.