This week our Junior Chefs will be making pizza so the emphasis this week is not so much on seasonality, but the technique of making dough.
Pizza is a very popular dish throughout the world this savoury dish of Italian origin, is normally round consisting of a flattened base wheat-based dough, topped with tomatoes, cheese, and various other ingredients then baked at a high temperature, traditionally in a wood-fired oven.
Interesting fact for you Junior Chefs!
In the 1800s, most Italians thought of pizza as a peasant meal. That changed when a baker named Raffaele Esposito created a margarita pizza for visiting royalty. The king and queen were impressed by the colors of the Italian flag represented by the pizza’s white mozzarella cheese, red tomato sauce, and green basil. Pizza became fashionable overnight and was soon a staple in restaurants all across the country. (Reference: Wikipedia: Fun Facts about Pizza.)
This week our Junior Chefs will be learning some new skills to make their pizzas including: Washing, weighing, measuring, chopping, mixing/combining, kneading, and baking.
Neapolitans, the masters of pizza baking, say the dough should be made from brewer’s yeast, flour, salt, and water. Some also add a little olive oil!
Junior Chefs will need lots of energy as kneading dough by hand can take up to 10 minutes as we will need to keep working it until the dough feels smooth and stretchy, but working quickly because over-handling will toughen the dough. Whilst our dough is left to rise we will have lots to do preparing our pizza topping chopping and cutting our chosen ingredients.
