27 Nov winter pizza

We are so into winter. We have the bounty of autumn in our belly and are keeping warm with soups and stews. We’re so happy to be back with forkful season 2 and to share our favourite winter pizza recipe with you.

Making pizza dough is wonderfully simple. Our pizza might not be perfect (we still don’t know how to stretch and spin the dough like real Italians do) but we love using the fruits and vegetables of winter as toppings.

We picked up a bunch of wild mushrooms from Fallon & Byrne and mixed them with garlic, rosemary and lemon. Instead of the traditional tomato sauce, we’ve used the fabulous Toonsbridge ricotta cheese as a bed for our mushrooms.

If you’re not into that, try using our beetroot hummus as a tomato sauce alternative and throw on a few figs, parma ham, walnuts and rocket as your topping.

This simple pizza base is just flour, yeast, salt and water and takes only a few minutes to bring together and 30 minutes to rest. If you don’t have a pizza stone, a good hot baking tray will do.

what you need for a forkful of winter pizza (makes enough dough for 3 pizzas)

Ingredients

500g strong white flour (type “oo” is what the Italians like to use but Odlums is good too)

1 tsp salt

12g fresh yeast (we like the Doves Farm quick yeast variety)

300ml warm water

100g semolina

Good handful of wild mushrooms

1/2 a lemon

2 cloves of garlic, grated

2 sprigs of rosemary

Salt

Pepper

Sunflower oil (to grease the baking tray/pizza stone)

Irish ricotta

Parmesan

Method 

In large bowl, mix the flour, salt and yeast. Add the warm water in three batches. Mix with your hands until the dough forms.

Put onto a floured surface and knead for a few minutes until the dough is firm. Put in greased bowl, cover with clingfilm and allow to a rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop your mushrooms. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, the leaves from the sprigs of rosemary, grated garlic, a good glug of olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper to the mushrooms and mix. Leave to marinate.

Heat your oven to its highest temperature.

Grease a baking tray of pizza stone with a bit of sunflower oil (this is better than olive oil because it can withstand very high heat – olive oil tends to get a little smokey).

Put it into the oven (follow the instructions on the pizza stone – most of them need to be heated gradually in the oven) and allow it to get very, very hot!

Take the dough out of the greased bowl (it should have about doubled and will be lovely and soft and fluffed up). Divide into three. If you’re only making one pizza, wrap the two extra dough balls in clingfilm and keep in the fridge for up to two days.

Roll out the pizza dough on floured surface into a lovely round and dust with semolina. Carefully put the dough onto the (very hot!) greased baking tray or pizza stone.

Spread the base with ricotta. Add the mushrooms and sprinkle with grated parmesan.

Cook in the really hot oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until crisp and delicious.

Thanks so much to the awesome Somadrone for the use of the brilliant track Reckoning for this forkful. Buy his album The First Wave here.