I have rather a love-hate
relationship with pizzas. A little like the Marmite conundrum. I love the fact
that it can be all things to all people and, really, anything goes. (Not pineapple, though, in my opinion.)
It can be as healthy or as indulgent as you like. (I recently came across a
rather luxurious recipe which included white truffles.) Most importantly,
though, it is a food which most, if not all, children like mainly because of
its versatility. I have always made pizzas with the little ones as it is both
sensorial and productive at the same time. I adore the extremely proud faces
stood in the doorway as I remove them from the oven and the excited:-
“That’s
mine…..I made that……all by myself!”
So why the love-hate thing?
I have had a few sticky
(pardon the pun) situations with pizza dough. I mentioned its versatility and
how much children get out of playing with it. (In fact, I regularly use pizza
dough for children to use with as they wish as it has a great elasticity and is
fantastic for practicing stretching and pulling.)
Have you seen the expert
Italian chefs and how they make bases? Lots of twirling and throwing up in the
air. We watched a video demonstrating this quite recently. I can honestly say the
throwing-it-up-in-the-air bit was the highlight. The first thing the 3 year old did was lob a
large piece upwards with all she could muster. So hard was it thrown, in fact,
that a large particularly sticky piece caught on the ceiling and then began slowly
reaching down determined to comply with gravity. In fact it became a bit of a
celebrity. My own children were treated
to a guided tour of my ceiling where we also spotted a cobweb and a couple of
spiders thrown in as an added attraction. Before taking the decision to start
charging for this new site of not-so-historical interest, I did actually remove
it. This was much to the annoyance of
the children one of whom stood beneath it, dish in hand, at several intervals
during the course of the day, hoping it would eventually drop. (And you thought
this sort of thing only happened on Pancake Day.)
Pizza dough also took centre
stage at my last Ofsted inspection when, stifling chuckles, the inspector
watched as one of my then 2 year olds began using it for racket ball practice
and flung it at all 4 corners of my garden.
She, later, worriedly asked me what I was “now going to do with the
dough?”
“I am not making it into
pizza, if that’s what you’re thinking,”
I hurriedly replied whilst
thinking; I bet Jamie Oliver never has this problem.
It has also caused a local
MP to leave my home a little earlier than anticipated when he posed for a photo
with 2 of the children and one of them used his trousers as a towel after
dusting the dough with flour.
I went shopping earlier and
looked at the pizza displays in the local supermarket with their humongous amounts of cheese, meagre doses of vegetables and thin, sickly coloured
bases. These are the pizzas I really don’t like. I left them well alone and proceeded to the
aisle with the bread flour and the yeast wondering what the children would
conjure up at my next pizza fest…..and whether I should contact Jamie Oliver to
uncover his pizza etiquette.
