The clock on the oven said 4:52 and four balls of dough were sitting under a tea towel on the counter like small sleeping animals. The oven itself had been at its highest setting for twenty minutes with two upside-down baking trays inside, and the kitchen smelled of hot flour. That's how every Friday pizza night starts now. It took us until about February to get there.
The dough
I make it on Friday mornings after drop-off, because I'm home on Fridays and it only needs me in short bursts. The recipe is nothing special: 600g of strong white flour, one 7g sachet of fast-action yeast, a teaspoon each of salt and sugar, two tablespoons of olive oil and about 380ml of warm water. Ten minutes of kneading, then it sits on the sunny windowsill for two hours or so, until it has roughly doubled and looks pleased with itself. After lunch I knock it back, cut it into four, and leave the balls under the tea towel until tea.
The first attempt, back in January, was a disaster. I rolled the bases out with a pin until they were thinner than a coaster, put them on a cold tray, and they welded themselves to it. We ate toast. Now I stretch each base by hand, slide it on to baking paper, and tip it on to a tray that has been in the oven for twenty minutes. Eight or nine minutes later it's a pizza, and the bottom stays where it belongs.
The toppings bar
Everything goes in bowls on the counter and everyone builds their own. Isla stretches her base herself and makes what she calls the Isla: mushrooms, sweetcorn and a heart of pepperoni. Alfie spreads the sauce, which is smooth passata and nothing else, because anything with bits in it is a betrayal. He then asks for cheese only, and sauce must not touch the crust. Rob goes for ham, pepperoni and a shake of chilli flakes that I can feel from the other side of the kitchen. I have pineapple, and I've given up defending it.
What a Friday's four pizzas cost, off the receipts in the jar:
- Dough (flour, yeast, salt and oil): 65p
- Passata and herbs, half a carton: 38p
- Mozzarella, two 125g blocks: £1.10
- Pepperoni, one pack: £1.09
- Ham, half a pack: 60p
- Sweetcorn, half a tin: 20p
- Pineapple chunks, half a tin: 45p
- Mushrooms, half a tub: 33p
That's £4.80 for four pizzas, or £1.20 a pizza. The leftover halves of tins turn up in sandwiches on Saturday.
Against the takeaway
Last Friday was a chippy tea, £29.40 for four, and it was lovely, and I won't pretend it wasn't. We do a chippy every other Friday, with the other Fridays split between fish finger sandwiches and this. A takeaway pizza night for the four of us, with a side and a big bottle of fizzy pop, comes to about £30 round here. So the same evening costs £30 or it costs £4.80. I've done that sum enough times to feel faintly silly about it.
It isn't free, and it isn't quick. The oven at its top setting for about fifty minutes in two batches uses roughly 15p of gas, going by what I see on the smart meter, so £4.95 all in. There's around twenty-five minutes of hands-on work spread across the day, and there is flour on the kitchen floor until Saturday morning. Alfie once made a pizza the exact shape of Australia and insisted it be cooked as it was. It was the best pizza of the night.
What I like most is that it has become the Friday that nobody has to be talked into. Isla sets the table without being asked. Alfie washes his hands twice. On the weeks when the windowsill has been a bit cold and the dough has barely risen, nobody says anything. They just stretch it thinner and call it Italian. Even Rob, who started out calling the whole idea 'a lot of faff for a Friday', now checks the bowl on the windowsill when he gets in from his round, like a man looking in on a sleeping baby.
The sums: £4.80 for four pizzas, about £4.95 with the gas, against £30 from the takeaway, and nobody asked what else there was at nine o'clock.
