Pepper Crust Pizza

I promised a chocolate pudding recipe but my pics didn't come out right so will post another recipe instead! It's the pizza recipe we had the other day - we've had it again for dinner tonight and enhanced it a bit. Beautiful!

Black Pepper Crusted Pizza

Of course, this is pizza, so you can add whatever toppings you want, hence why the ingredients list is a bit 'bare' or vague. We used bacon, mushrooms and onion. Go for whatever you like!
You can use any type of bread flour you want. We had a wholewheat, rye and pumpkin seed one in the pantry that I usually make soda bread from so used that...

* 325g of bread flour
* 1tsp salt
* 1/2 tsp sugar
* 1/2 tbsp olive oil
* 3.5g easy bake yeast.
* 150-200ml of warm water
* Freshly cracked black pepper
* Few sprigs of Thyme
* Mature Cheddar Cheese
* 1/2 tsp of garlic paste
* Tomato purée and humous (if you want to use humous as a
* Your choice of pizza toppings!


1. Make your pizza base. In a large bowl, add your flour, salt, sugar, easy yeast, olive oil and your cracked black pepper - this is for taste and we like quite a lot, so go for however much you think you'd like!

2. Add your water , a bit at a time. You may not need the full 200ml , add enough to make a ball that comes away from the bowl clean!

3. Knead for around 5-10minutes until the dough is smooth an elasticky!

4. Leave to rest for around 15 minutes, then you can start rolling out.

Roll out until its around the thickness of two playing cards. It takes some doing as the dough can keep shrinking back, but stick with it and be patient. It really does make a lovely base! Make sure you roll thin enough as otherwise when it cooks it will rise and be too dough-y!

Roll your base slightly bigger than your tray. We have a 12 inch round pizza tray.

At this point, preheat your oven to gas mark 6.

5. Once the base is on the tray, trim the edge so its about half an inch over the edge of the tray.

6. The excess that now hangs off the tray can simply be rolled back onto itself on the tray to make a 'crust'

7. Dab the seals with a bit of oil to enhance browning whilst cooking. You can also add some oil onto the base at this point.
We then put a few sprigs of thyme onto the base.

8. Bake the base on its own for around 2 or 3 minutes to give it a head start. Take out the oven and start adding your toppings...
As part of our toppings, we fried some bacon bits that we snipped up with some scissors into a pan with some hot oil ( it never really cooks fully in the oven on top of the pizza especially the fatty bits, so pre-fry it in a pan until crispy)

9. Next, spread a bit of garlic paste on the base and then smear half the pizza with a humous base and the other half with the tomato purée (or whatever you want to use!)

10. We then added half an onion in thin slices and grated on some ordinary mature cheddar cheese...

11. We topped with a few sliced mushrooms and the bacon bits

12. Cook in the oven for around 20-25 minutes , turning the pizza half way round after about 10 minutes to ensure even browning. Perfect.

Real food doesn't get much better than this!


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