Homemade Cheese and Tomato Garlic Pizza Bread – a crisp dough with that perfect chewy interior, loaded with garlic, tomatoes and two types of cheese!
I adore pasta, so I’d never turn down going to an Italian restaurant, but I’ll always choose pasta (or meat/fish) over pizza.
I think it’s the sheer amount of tomato paste, the often slightly soggy base, and the fact that every mouthful tastes the same, that generally makes me ignore that side of the menu.
The only exception was when we were in Italy last year. The flavour of the dough seemed to be every bit as important as the toppings. Simple ingredients and only a few of them.
I still picked pasta more often, but I did go for pizza a couple of times and it was delicious.
That simple, tasty (and not overly-tomatoey style) was what I was looking to recreate when I started out with this pizza bread recipe.
Garlic bread is always a great starting point – I mean, who doesn’t love garlic bread! So the addition of a few more simple ingredients – namely cheddar, mozzarella and fresh cherry tomatoes – seemed like the perfect way to go.
I use a classic pizza dough recipe for this Cheese and Tomato Garlic Pizza Bread – bread flour, yeast, warm water and a touch of sugar and salt, and give it one decent hour-long prove before shaping the dough and allowing it to rest for 5 minutes before dredging in fine semolina (this gives the pizza a slightly rougher finish with a little more flavour and extra crispness) and shaping.
That homemade taste is just perfect – I could totally have eaten the whole thing if Chris and the kids weren’t clambering over each other to grab a slice!
So, getting onto ‘the news’…….
No I’m not pregnant, and nor to I have a cookery book deal (in my dreams!!), but…
We do have a new blog going live!
An idea I’ve had for over a year now is finally starting to come to fruition (made much easier with Chris finishing work to join me on Kitchen Sanctuary a few months ago). It’s call Living the Blog and it’s basically going to be a place to write about how we, as a family of four, living in the UK, run our blogging business.
This is a totally new thing for us, but based on comments and emails we’ve received from publishing our income reports, we thought it would be fun to show people how we do things.
Whether that’s how we get freelance work, our steps for updating WordPress, what’s in our camera bags and what my everyday timetable looks like – we’re hoping that if you’re a blogger (or if you’d like to start your own blog), then they’ll be something there to help you.
If things go smoothly, we should be making the site live (along with the first few blog posts) later this week. I’ll announce it on Kitchen Sanctuary as soon as it’s up. ????????????
The Cheese and Tomato Garlic Pizza Bread Recipe:
Cheese and Tomato Garlic Pizza Bread
Ingredients
- 325 ml lukewarm water
- 1 1/2 tsp dried instant yeast
- 1 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp coarse semolina
- Topping Ingredients:
- 75 g salted butter, very soft
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3 cloves garlic peeled and minced
- 25 g before chopping fresh parsley leaves, finely chopped
- 8 cherry tomatoes sliced
- 100 g mature cheddar cheese, grated (check for vegetarian if required)
- 100 g mozzarella cheese, grated (check for vegetarian if required)
Instructions
- Place the lukewarm water in a jug and stir in the yeast and sugar. Leave for 5 minutes until it foams on top.
- Place the flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. Start the mixer running at low speed, then slowly pour in the yeast mixture until combined.
- Increase the speed to medium, and let the mixer knead the dough for 10 minutes. Turn the mixer off and place clingfilm over the bowl. Leave the dough to prove in a warm room for 50-60 minutes - until doubled in size.
- Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Place two large metal baking trays in the oven to heat up.
- Once the dough has risen, tip it out onto a well-floured surface. Split the dough into two portions and knead with your hands for a minute or two, to knock out the air. Form the dough into two balls and let them rest on the surface for 5 minutes.
- In a medium sized bowl, mix together butter, salt, garlic and parsley until combined.
- After 5 minutes, dust both of the dough balls with the semolina and stretch out to form two rough pizza shapes.
- Take the hot trays out of the oven and spray or brush with a little oil.
- Place one pizza on each tray. Spoon the garlic butter onto the pizza breads and use the back of a spoon to smooth the butter all over - right up to the edges.
- Top with the cherry tomato slices and sprinkle on the cheese.
- Place in the oven and cook for 10-13 minutes until golden brown, then slice and serve.
Recipe Notes
Nutritional Information
