Easy posh pizza recipe, with homemade garlic white sauce base.

Have you been lacking oomph? I've certainly been lacking the oomph for blogging, so today have had a ramble at the camera to explain such, and in that video promised to share a recipe for you to try. This isn't becoming a cooking blog, I'm simply sharing something I've enjoyed creating recently!

Everyone and their badger seems to be cooking at the moment, so I've joined the madness... I've made pizza. If a friend's 5 year old can manage it, I figure I can. To make it classy, I've modified a white sauce recipe, which makes a gorgeous garlic base. This creates a wonderful vegetarian pizza, or you can add cooked chicken, thinly sliced cooked potato, mushrooms, red onion  and mozzarella for a posh pizza. 

The recipes, and servings

You can use either recipe alone, but if you want to cook the pizza with the garlic white sauce, get your toppings sliced and prepared first, and put the oven to 220 degrees/200 fan, that way the oven can be heating up as you cook the sauce.

​Both recipes take about 40  minutes, plus a little time to chop your toppings (unless you plan to do it in the 5 minutes while the base pre-bakes).

Serves: 1 really very hungry person who fancies a whole pizza..... or 2 people, or even 4 people as part of a meal with a slice each, chips and salad etc. (Tip, have some salad or sides as an option if you cook this for the first time for 2 people, as if your base ends up too thick, you get less overall pizza, so the sides will help it add up to a meal)

Kit wise, you need:
Scales
Measuring jug
Teaspoon, tablespoon, knife
Decent size frying pan or pan
Whisk
​Mixing bowl
Mixing spoon (or hands)
Rolling pin (or a clean round bodied bottle)
Baking tray(s) You may want to divide the dough if you use two smaller trays 

Garlic white Sauce for pizza

Cooking time about 10 to 12 minutes
This gets you a LOT of sauce for the pizza, so if you find it's too much, pop the spare in the fridge, and the next day it goes amazingly in a toasted cheese or ham sandwich, or spread under the cheese on cheese on toast.

​Dribble of cooking oil or butter
​8 garlic cloves finely chopped- Use less if you don't want as strong a flavour
1/2 teaspoon oregano
Pinch salt and pepper
2 tablespoons plain flour (plus another 1 just in case)
​370 ml milk

• On medium heat, heat the oil/butter, add the garlic and heat for about 3 minutes.
• Add the oregano, seasoning, 2 tablespoons of flour, and whisk.
• It should sort of meld into garlicky flour blobs.
• Pour all milk in and whisk constantly for about 3 minutes. 
• Mix should be bubbling and thickening, remove from heat when at desired thickness!
• ​Too thin? In a cup, mix the extra spoon of flour with a little milk, adding a tiny amount of liquid at time, until it's like middlingly soft ice cream. Whisk this mix into the sauce (If you try to just add the flour right in, it'll form lumpy little blobs)

Two ingredients easy Pizza base

About 10 minutes prep and 15 to 20 minutes oven

200g self raising flour (plus extra for dusting)
150 to 200g 0% fat Greek style yogurt

You choice of toppings.... and the white sauce you just made, or your own tomato sauce.

• Preheat oven to 220 degrees (200 fan)
• Put flour into mixing bowl, add 100g of the yogurt and mix with a spoon.
• If the mix isn't forming a ball of dough, you may need to add more yogurt in small gradual amounts - too much at once and it'll go too wet and sticky, and then you'll need more flour... and so on!
• Transfer to a lightly floured surface, knead gently for a few minutes, until slightly tacky and stretchy - not too long!
• Roll out to fit your baking tray (so it may be more than one pizza, and even rectangular!)
• Pop into heated oven for about 5 minutes - handy time to clean the surfaces!
• Remove from oven, turn over so the base is now the top, spread sauce and toppings, return to oven for 10 to 15 minutes or so - handy time to wash up!

I made my dough too wet and over-kneaded a little, so couldn't get the base as thin as I wanted. No worries though, if you get a thicker base just allow a little longer pre-baking, and then again when cooking with the toppings. That'll cook through the base for you.

Give it a go!

Cooking from scratch which doesn't take hours, require lots of odd ingredients, or create a pile of cleaning is a very rewarding way to spend some time, and this is genuinely an easy recipe easy to "bring back" if you add a little too much of any ingredient (and can be delicious even if you do make a chunkier base)

There's lots of scope to try different toppings (I think bacon will be yum on this...) so let me know your topping suggestions in the comments, or even recommend other easy recipes I can have a go at!