I adore going to my boyfriends parents house for the weekend. They live not too far from the coast and have the most amazing house – complete with a pizza oven and a large veg patch in the garden.

Despite the fact that the pizza oven has been sat in the garden for a good couple of years, we had never used it – until a couple of weekends ago when I was determined to make the most of the bank holiday weekend (and the last of the summer days).

For the toppings, we rummaged around in the veg patch and used home grown basil, potatoes, courgette – and used the eggs laid by the chickens that run free range around the garden!

I also used a pack of the BEST iberico ham that I carved by hand at the Brindisa ham school a couple of weeks ago as a delicious topping.

Here’s a recipe for dough and a basic tomato sauce – you can use whatever toppings you like. I usually prefer to keep it pretty simple but each one of us had a go at creating our own pizza and I have to say that they were all utterly delicious!

Ingredients

650g strong white bread flour
7g sachet of easy-blend yeast
3 tsp salt
25ml olive oil
50ml milk
320ml warm water

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast and salt together in a large mixing bowl and stir in the olive oil and milk. Add the water gradually and mix well
2. Knead for about five minutes either on a surface, or by using a dough hook on a mixer
3. Leave to rise in a bowl covered with a damp tea towel for roughly 1 1/2 hours, or until it has doubled in size
4. When the dough has doubled in size, knock it back and knead again until smooth. Place back in the bowl but don’t cover with a tea towel this time and leave in the bowl for another hour to rise again

Tomato sauce

Ingredients

5 tins chopped tomatoes
4 bay leaves
2 cloves of garlic
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes
salt and pepper
Olive oil

Method

1. Fry the garlic in a large glug of olive oil for 1 minute
2. Add the tinned tomatoes, bay leaves and salt and pepper and leave to simmer for an hour, or until very reduced and the cherry tomatoes have gone very soft

Cook the pizza how you want – but make sure to leave it in the oven long enough for the cheese to melt and the base to crisp.