Lodge-made Pizza

It's pizza in South Africa

It's taken us two years to even attempt to make our own pizza at Valley Lodge. We made pizzas all the time back in the US. We built make-your-own-pizza parties around them and holiday dinners too.

We started making our own pizzas out of necessity after one of our favorite pizza parlors moved, and more importantly, took with them our favorite take-away pizza recipe. Tex-Mex pizza. Drastic times called for drastic measures.

pizza in the oven

 
Without our trusty KitchenAid mixer with its robust dough attachment, our reliable Wolf gas pizza oven (or our fabricated FrankenWeber outdoors), our Williams-Sonoma pizza stones, a consistent source for 00 flour and pepperoni, and dozens of the other necessary paraphernalia back home in storage or otherwise unavailable here in South Africa, we have been too spooked to even try.

pizza in the FrankenWeber

But prompted by a pizza stone and paddle we recently found in a restaurant supply store and some really tasty Israeli tomatoes from Woolies, we decided to give it a go.

n.b. About the flour, we used Eureka Mills bread flour. It was only okay. We have been able to find semolina flour here in Joburg too, but not 00 flour. We have heard you can buy it straight from the kitchen at Doppio Zero in Greenside but we haven't tried to do that yet. We have however some on order from our friend Graziella who runs the Italian market stall at Bryanston Organic Market. She also owns an Italian restaurant and uses Doppio Zero flour in the kitchen. And then there is Super Sconto. When I called to ask if they carry it, they said, "Yes, of course!" Sì, certo! 

Good to know for next time ...

the moment of truth

the dough feels right

Margherita base with artichokes and ricotta

quasi-pepperoni pizza (turns out chorizo is an okay substitute)

And the pièce de résistance! Drumroll please ...

Tex-Mex pizza

Now we're talking - Caesar salad with anchovies and Fruits de Mer pizzas on Christmas Eve!

Fast forward to October 2015's Pizza Oven Christening

PS Our South African friends Johann and Louise have installed a real brick oven in their new backyard Lapa. We can't wait to show them how to make pizza in it!