Pizza From a Jar?

I love making Pizza but am super-pernickety about the ingredients. For my Winter pizzas we have all our stored produce from the Summer, frozen tomato sauces, carefully crafted from a magic blend of several types of basil and home-grown and bartered varieties of tomato. We have 700 varieties to choose from here in France. Once heirloom tomatoes were threatened with extinction but a couple of decades ago were saved from the compost bin of history, by the ex-stockbroker/investment banker turned gardener and tomato godfather the Prince de Broglie. Several years ago we went to the Feast of the Tomato held in his château on the Loire and managed to get hold of a whole raft of seeds, which we now save from year to year.

So when this contest came along, I thought why not try a pizza without my own sauce and use a jar variety instead. This is not an expensive organic sauce, it is a very ordinary own-brand supermarket organic range sauce but I'm hoping that with the right additions and blends of flavour it will become something delectable.

All my ingredients are organic:

2½ cups - 11oz - 300g strong white flour

½ teaspoon of dried yeast (I use Dove's Farm)

½ teaspoon of sugar

1 - 2 tablespoons olive oil

generous pinch of raw sea salt (added to the flour)

¾cup - 6floz - 170ml of luke warm water

Start the yeast by adding it to the sugar and stirring in a third of the water. Leave it in a warm place to start working (approx. 10 minutes).

When the yeast is frothy add it into a well you have made in the flour and then add the rest of the water.

Mix the flour with the liquid by dragging the flour from the sides of the bowl into the well to form a stiff dough.

Knead the dough for between 5 to 10 minutes until it has a glossy sheen.

Leave to rise in the bowl, in a warm place and covered with a dish cloth to stop a skin forming.

Apart from the I2oz - 350g Jar of Provençale Sauce and to give you an idea of what's in it Dave's Gourmet Pasta Sauce has exactly the same ingredients although it is actually made with heirloom tomatoes!

I added:

3 medium sized red onions

16 - 20 black olives

2oz - 50g cooked ham or bacon

A 4oz - 100g bag of raw grated Emmental cheese

Chop the onions and soften in butter until they become translucent.

Add the jar of sauce.

Cook together for a short while. The sauce in my jar was already reduced by half according to the label but if your sauce looks too thin then you will need to reduce it by cooking it briskly with the lid off until you are satisfied.

Preheat the oven:

To get a crispy crust you need the pizza to cook quite quickly at a high temperature - 400°F or 200°C

Cooking Pan Dimensions:

13½" x 8" - 34cm x 20cm

It is now time to check on your dough.

When the dough is ready (it should have risen and will look puffy - this takes approximately an hour in a warm room), remove it from the bowl and knock it back.

This is a process by which CO₂ is removed from the dough. As a flat bread, you don't want it to rise too much.

It is then ready to roll out.

Place dough in the greased tin, I then leave it to prove for a few minutes on the top of a rack on top of the wood cooker. This allows it to relax and will make for a lighter base.

Once you notice it is starting to rise, then it is ready for the topping.

Cover your dough generously but not too thickly with the sauce. At this size of pan, I found there was a some sauce left over but as we were having good old 'pizza and chips', I used this as extra dipping sauce.

Sprinkle on the chopped ham or bacon.

Be generous with the cheese.

Finish with the olives.

Place in the preheated oven for 15 - 20 minutes or until the crust is crisp but do check after 10 minutes just to see how things are going. We have a cast iron wood cooker so once it is up to temperature it has an all round even heat. If you actually have a pizza oven then - lucky you and you'll know better than I do how long to cook it.

A good way of finding out if you pizza is ready, is to gently lift up one corner of the pizza base and if it comes away easily from the tin, then it is ready.

The Result

This pizza was really tasty and we both enjoyed it but it didn't have the depth of flavour in the tomato sauce that a home-made sauce would have but then..... I didn't have to spend much time making it!

Next time I'd add extra herbs and then I believe, I'll have nailed it.