funghi pizza swirls – and a giveaway

… pizza.  Can you remember a time before pizza?  Any of my readers who are, like me in their very late twenties, will remember that the humble pizza; a fixture on every decent high-street, the staple of a boozy Saturday night in front of the TV and at least 2 of every students ‘5-a-day’ was once the food phenomena that the burger holds today.  I remember, before even the advent of take-aways, going to my first pizza restaurant in London and marvelling at the juicy, cheesiness of it all.  I remember the long list of toppings that could be chosen at will to lay on top of the, what seemed to me, quite exotic tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese but I particularly remember loving the idea of a fungi pizza (for some reason my tastes have always been rather simple) and have had a love of mushroom pizza ever since… and the funny thing is that even though we’re closer to Italy than our good cousins the Americans, it was they who brought this doughy delight to our shores with the likes of Pizza Hut and Domino’s… of course now that food has reached something of a zenith here in the UK you can get some quite incredible pizzas both in situ and delivered direct to your door and the wood-burning stove has become a regular feature at pop-up foodie markets all over the country.  Still, there is nothing quite like making it at home…

funghi pizza swirls
i was inspired to make these pizza swirls by the lovely Courtney Cornfield who tweeted me a picture of hers… but I also am a huge cheese lover and as most of you know, I will devour anything with cheese in it or cheese related.  These cute swirls have two types of cheese; the traditional mozzarella but i’ve also added a very strong cheddar as I think this adds a nutty and sweet cheese flavour that make the pizza seem more authentic to me somehow… talking of cheese,,, the fine folk at cuckoo land.com the purveyors of all things quirky and unique have given me 3 Boska cheese-making kits to giveaway to three lucky readers of this blog… Boska are the same fab people who made the giant fondue set I reviewed earlier in the month…

… it’s one kit per person and the kits that will come out to you at random are the Boska Holland Home Goats Cheese Maker Kit, the Boska Holland Butter Maker Kit and a personal favourite the Boska Holland Mozzarella Cheese Maker Kit each of which retails at a recommended £17.95… and all you have to do to enter is fill in the natty little rafflecopter gadget below…

for the pizza dough
500g strong white bread flour
325ml luke warm water
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon fast action dried yeast
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons caster sugar

for the filling
to make your own tomato sauce (which is well worth it) try my recipe for tomato jam
10 medium chestnut or dark brown mushrooms – very finely chopped
2 teaspoons fresh or dried oregano
1 twig of rosemary
butter
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 large ball of mozzarella
100g strong cheddar – grated

make the tomato sauce as instructed in the link above or use a shop-bought good quality tomato sauce, you’ll need roughly 350ml

make the dough by adding the oil, yeast, salt and sugar to the water and leaving for 5 mins whilst you sieve the flour into a large bowl

add the water and oil mix and bring the flour together with your hands then knead for about 10 mins until the dough is soft and silky… place a damp tea towel over the bowl and set aside whilst the dough doubles in size which should give you the perfect amount of time to make the mushroom filling

heat some oil and butter in a pan and add the mushrooms and let them gently squeak away for about 10 minutes, sea on well, add the oregano and stir then set aside to cool

flour your work surface then roll out the dough to a rectangle roughly 45cm x 20cm and spread generously with the tomato sauce, go all the way to the edges.  Sprinkle on the cooked mushrooms then the grated cheddar followed by the mozzarella which I pull into generous chunks – season well with the fresh rosemary and plenty of salt and pepper

generously oil your baking tray… I used one 30cm x 20cm rectangular pan and one 20cm x 20cm pan but feel free to create any shape you’d like – pre-heat your oven to 180C

using the long edge furthest away, roll the pizza up towards you as tight as possible.  Once you have a long sausage shape cut it into rings roughly 1 inch thick, you should get at least 12 rings. Gently place them into your baking trays, not too tightly packed and set aside for 30 mins to rise

bake for 25 mins until puffed up and bubbly – they’re great to eat straight away but are also delicious cold

a Rafflecopter giveaway//widget.rafflecopter.com/load.js

the pizza swirls freeze beautifully, I freeze them in pairs and then reheat from frozen in the oven…

eat and of course, enjoy!