Pizza

I worked as a professional pizza baker for a day and a half you know. I left because the boss wouldn't tell me how much, if anything, he was going to pay me, but I learned a lot.

Pizza is really easy. You need a bit of white bread dough, some cheese and some stuff to put on top, and beer to drink with it.

Make a dough with white bread flour, yeast, water and salt. You can add olive oil and beer if you like. You don't need much dough unless you want a really thick, bready pizza that will feed you for the next three days, or you can fit a pizza a metre square in your oven.

Old dough is the best. You can make good pizza with fresh dough, but dough a day old makes great pizza.

Roll it out. Depending on how flash you are, you can stretch it in your hands or spin it in the air too. Smear tomato paste thinly over the dough. I used to spend hours cooking a fine tomato sauce, but it's wasted effort. Tomato paste is much easier and better in a domestic oven because it has not much water in it, but lots of flavour. If you have a pizza oven that goes up to 350 C and will evaporate the water, you can use home-made or canned tomato sauce without the pizza going soggy. If you don't, then use paste.

Sprinkle oregano over the pizza-to-be.

Then add your toppings. Less is more people. Don't overburden your pizza with eighteen different kinds of crap.

Then add cheese. Then add more oregano and black pepper. Bake it as hot as your oven will go for as long as it takes. I left mine in a bit too long, but it was still delicious.

Got it? Old dough. Tomato paste. Oregano. Topping and cheese. More oregano. Bake it hot. Beer. Wahey!