6th April 2026

Since we broke the Gozney out of its winter hiding spot, and since the sun is shining brightly, we thought we would make a pizza from Better at Home by Colu Henry.  I was trying to decide which 2 pizzas to make when word spread that homemade pizza was on the menu and suddenly everybody is coming over.  This always makes me happy to be surrounded by my babies.

The worst thing about this book is that measurements are largely cups.

I had never made dough with the water with some of the flour creating a paste and then carrying on, this felt weird but eventually worked.  I did ponder whether to use cups or grams being an American book but I chose grams and did regret it because even when all of the flour was in my dough was never going to be able to be kneaded or made into a ball.  I added 3 heaped tbsps extra and then the dough came together and behaved.  It was actually a really nice dough.  I do prefer crispy bases rather than chewy (my Gozney cookbook suggests bread flour for a crispier base) but Victoria said she really liked the soft base, the taste was good. I have since learnt that all-purpose flour (used so much in American books) actually has more gluten than plain flour making it similar to UK bread flour.  I want to try it again with bread flour and see how it goes.

We decided to make the ricotta, caramelised onion and hot honey pizza which needed

Caramelised onions.  I got my onions cooking while the dough rested and this was very simple, mine took about an hour to caramelise but they taste fab.  Colu says if anybody tells you caramelised onions take less than 45 minutes to not believe them and she is so right.  There is a point around the 35/40 minute mark when they just change and then they start to slowly go stickier and darker. 

We also decided to make the potato nduja and mozzarella pizza, the soppressata and pickled peppers pizza and the lobster, corn and jalapeño pizza.  I got all of the ingredients ready to go on different plates so that I could just roll out the dough and put the toppings on quickly.  Topping the pizza can’t be done early because the toppings change the dough a little and then they will stick and you won't be able to either get them on the peel if you have made on boards, or off the peel if made on the peel.  So since the pizza oven takes only a couple of minutes per pizza I got everything sorted early.

The potato, nduja and mozzeralla pizza: Because we were using the pizza oven I chose to cook the sliced potatoes as I didn’t think the potato would have long enough to cook on the base and I am glad I did.  I sliced the potatoes, put into a bag and steamed in the microwave for 3 minutes until they were soft.  As Noah was eating this also I kept one 'slice' on the pizza without the nduja as ours is spicy. This was the pizza most of us were looking forward to the most but it was the most disappointing, we all felt a tbsp or two of passata would have improved it - I will test this next time.  As I put it on the pizza peel I did not use enough flour and so it stuck annoyingly so is a very weird shape. Be generous with the flour. 

The soppressata and pickled pepper pizza: this was really very nice, we choe to use peppadews instead of pickled peppers as they are similar and peppadews is what we had.  We put them all over the top and it lifted the pizza and went really well and were lovely. Victoria said this was the one she thought would be her least favourite but it turned to actually be her favourite.  Very very nice.

The Lobster, corn and jalapeño: I don’t really like seafood in a tin too much as it tends to be a little watery so I chose to use raw prawns instead.  I cut them into pieces and scattered with the corn and jalapeño (again I left the chilli off of Noah’s slice). This was really tasty and was enjoyed by everybody.

Lastly we have the Ricotta, caramelised onion and hot honey: I sort of read this but looked at the picture mostly where there are lovely little lumps of ricotta, reading it I see she actually says to spread the ricotta over the base, I followed the picture. No matter, this was delicious and the clear winner, I put chilli flakes (on all but Noah’s ‘slice’) and drizzled the hot honey once his piece had been cut out as our hot honey is HOT.  There are quite a few pictures which differ from the recipe, clearly the stylist did not stick to the brief.  I know it is petty but this always annoys me. 

This was a lot of fun to do and we were all laughing and had such a lovely afternoon.  Once the 10 mad minutes of cooking and making pizzas had passed and we all sat eating there was lots of appreciative sounds all around the table and lots of discussions over the favourites.