Make Wood Fired Pizzas with the Kids These School Holidays

If you’re struggling to come up with new ideas to keep the kids entertained these school holidays, why not develop their inner Masterchef and make some delicious homemade pizzas?  It will it keep them entertained for a few hours and it’ll be one dinner you don’t have to bribe them to eat!

The first step to making homemade wood-fired pizzas is to make the pizza dough.

Ingredients:

• 525mL water, take (2/3 hot and 1/3 cold)
• 1 Tsp of Active Dry yeast
• 2 Tsp salt
• 2 Tblsp of brown sugar (if desired)
• 835g flour (all-purpose pastry blend)

Take flour, salt and yeast, mix slowly and pour in hot water and blend together. Once blended, place dough on a cutting board for kneading, placing a little flour on the board to prevent sticking. Now, slowly knead the dough. After the dough is firm, place it into a bowl and cover with a clean cloth for about an hour. Once the hour is up, knead firmly and place it back in the bowl and let it sit for another hour. Divide dough into at least 7 portions. Roll the sections flat and then twirl, working your dough wider.

Now kids wouldn’t be kids unless they tried to mimic the pizza twirling they see on the TV, however, unless you want flour spread all throughout your kitchen, I’d recommend leaving the throwing in the air pizza dough twirling to the professionals!

If you’re planning on cooking the pizzas in a wood-fired pizza oven, remember to light the fire either 45 minutes prior if you’re using a stainless steel wood-fired pizza oven, or 3 hours prior if you’re using a clay/brick wood-fired pizza oven. While I recommend leaving this part up to the adults, it could be a good opportunity to educate the kids about how to build a fire and the potential dangers if they try to do it themselves. If you don’t have a wood-fired pizza oven, cooking in a kitchen oven will also be fine, however, you just won’t get the same smoky flavour and cooking times will be 20 minutes instead of 2-3 minutes.

Once the dough is rolled out and the oven is almost at the correct temperature, it’s time to let the kids get creative with the toppings. Line up an array of small bowls with ingredients such as grated cheese, shredded ham, diced pineapple, salami, sliced mushrooms,  sundried tomatoes, pitted olives, capsicum etc. It might get a little messy with little hands spreading food all over your kitchen bench, but resist the temptation to follow them around with a damp cloth and instead, pull out the camera and take some happy snaps to use for another activity such as compiling their own recipe book.

While you’re all having fun, why not create a dessert pizza using Nutella, banana and marshmallows?

Enjoy

by: Rhiannon Peterson