[Closed] Pizza toppings

According to Jamie Oliver last night - sun-dried tomato purée, Red onion, Cumberland (or veggie) sausage, pine nuts, rosemary, mozzarella and GRAPES! It looked fantastic so we’re trying it this weekend.

seen this recommended a few times on here, a quick google suggests its a paste? so are you mixing a bit in with the tommy sauce to give it a kick, or using it as a topping?

its very soft sausage, almost a spreadable - i just grab little blobs and dot it around. its pretty fiery and tends to melt into the mozzerella... drooooooooooooool

Anchovies, salami high quality is better but supermarket stuff will do the job, onions, capers and chillis (vary according to taste).

As theotherjon said used tinned tomatoes not purée if making your own and also if you like cheese add some parmesan or that ‘not regionally protected’ alternative. Nigella does a good pizza recipe that you add your own toppings, can’t remember which book it is in though.

which is how we made our sauce last weekend, but why are you simmering afterwards?

To reduce acidity and bring out the sugars?

These days I prefer a non cooked tomato sauce. Whole san marzano toms squeezed by hand with a little salt, sugar and oregano.

Using the blender apparently splits the seeds which makes it bitter.

I simmer to reduce the volume and thicken it, preference rather than necessity.

Hate to say it, but I quite like the Pizza Hut/KFC popcorn chicken and gravy sauce pizza. More conventionally, normal tomato sauce with chopped up bacon and onion.

Best thing anyone can do with a pizza is not put pepperoni on it. Tastes great but that's where 90% of the oiliness comes from.

I don’t eat cheese so I put big blobs of creme fraiche on mine. As well as anchovies, olives and capers.

A drizzle of pesto work well too. And thinly sliced courgette. And chilli flakes.

Veggie chorizo too - and that quorn pepperoni is pretty decent.

I really fancy pizza now.

how are you cooking your ‘pizza haggis’

The haggis is usually already cooked so I just put little blobs around the pizza.  It will heat up well while the pizza cooks

What are people using for the sauce?

Two tins of nice chopped toms

one medium onion pealed  cut in half

two whole cloves of garlic, pealed

a smidge of chilli flake if you like it

a heavy handed application of origano

olive olive

some black pepper

All in a pan - low heat with the lid on for about an hour, just very gently bubbling away. Then remove the two onion halves and smush the garlic cloves against the side of the pan and stir in. Don't blend it - the lumps are good.

I sometimes have that and nothing else on a pizza

I’ve recently been using this as tomato sauce for pizza

Multi Roma passata

It’s fresh, sweet and tasty. Really lovely. Their tins of pizza sauce are good as well but this tastes so fresh, it’s great with simple Neapolitan pizzas.

I don’t eat cheese so I put big blobs of creme fraiche on mine. As well as anchovies, olives and capers.

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

Jesus H Corbett! That sounds like cruel and unusual torture! There’s probably laws against it! If not, there should be. Truly bloody awful! I’d rather eat my ownshoes

Pretty much all the suggestions on this thread are so middleclasstrackworld and so vomit-inducingly awful - Quarn on a pizza? Dear god, get a grip - that I’m going to suggest what most normal, sane people who haven’t yet disappeared up their own arses would do...

I mean; Have you stopped for a minute to imagine what the bloke who invented pizza would make of this self-indulgent toss?

Just phone your local pizza place up and ask them to deliver a 14” mighty meaty with some cheesy chips and I’ll guarantee you it’ll be ten times better than any of this chin-stroking shite.

It also has the bonus that it’ll save you a trip to Waitrose, so less mileage on the Audi and you don’t have to build a pointless pizza oven in your back garden.

With about five minutes to go

I feel I’ve let Binners down 😔. And to think he once doffed his cap at my McDonald’s intake! The shame!

I’m not angry

I’m just disappointed

I’m not angry

I’m just disappointed

Sit back and relax with a nice mug of mellow birds 😉

I’m not angry

I’m just disappointed

Firing up the Domino’s App as we speak 🥳

@trail-rat.
Clearly I don't have a pizza over. Clearly you do. 😛

Have to admit I find tomato sauces a bit cloying and prefer to add just a bit to a garlic flavoured sauce.
Plenty of cooked meats like salami and chorizo, though too much can make it too oily(Usually needs a pressing with a kitchen towel to soak a bit of it up. Always onions,defatted bacon is nice too and thats about all she wrote. Other than fresh sliced mozzarella, rather than the pre grated packet stuff.

Anyone puts pineapple on a pizza should be shot.

Firing up the Domino’s App as we speak

Does anyone actually like Domino's? They always seemed to me to be overpriced voucher-driven mediocrity. There's a proper Italian place just up the road from here which makes pizza from actual food and is half the price of Domino's.

But as per Binners, I'd rather get a Pizza Shaped Object from a Highway Kebabbery with a sweaty elephant's leg at the back than go to Domino's / Papa John's / all the other big chains who want to charge 17 quid for a small pizza unless it's between 5pm and 5:30pm on a Tuesday, you've got a coupon and you're buying six of them.

Remember the 'flat roofed pub' rule? Here's my pizza shop corollary: never visit a pizza chain which thinks it's acceptable to sell pizza by the slice.

I'm absolutely mystified as to how Dominos are still in business, especially in the era of Just Eat etc.

I've never had one.

Mainly because we've got an absolutely top notch pizza place that delivers and seems to be about half the price of Domino's. Hasn't everybody?

for the sauce I just use a half decent passata - topping wise i'm partial to gorgonzola and parma ham, or a liberal application of razor thin slices of garlic & chilli (flakes or fresh)

I’ve never had one.

How do you know they're not delicious* then?

* They aren't. They're massively greasy but that's not the point. Pizza Hut is far superior to both Dominos and Papa Johns FWIW.

especially in the era of Just Eat etc

Domino's will have Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber terminals chirping away so they don't miss out.

Here’s my pizza shop corollary: never visit a pizza chain which thinks it’s acceptable to sell pizza by the slice.

You've never been to Italy then?

Heh. I take your point but that's a wholly different scenario.

As has probably been said, best bet is to make a proper tomato sauce using good quality tomatoes, then use a decent buffalo mozzarella and then some fresh basil after cooking.

Thinly-sliced shiitake mushroom is a winning addition. two slices of mushroom per slice. Quality and taste over quantity is what I find works best for pizzas and that goes for bread, base-sauce and toppings. Don’t skimp on the quality of the tinned toms. I find Cirio or Napolina to be both fine.

I do like the odd anchovy but they are expensive so looked at sourcing a cost-effective alternative. I found ‘Lusso Vita’ Anchovy Paste, around a quid from Waitrose. Bingo! Those little pea-sized blobs of anchovy-paste (just one or two per slice) deliver delicious hot packets of salty umami flavour in just the right amount. That sounds all sorts of wrong but trust me.

Dominos is the worst pizza I’ve had.

Despite owning a pizza oven I still indulge in the odd takeaway pizza, they’re different to home but still good. That said there’s 2 pizza places near me that do ‘proper’ pizzas too not kebab shop style.

Honestly, if you take away the snobbery, the question then just becomes “what can I put on warm flatbread?”

You could say that about any actual dish and still be wrong 😉

Cornish pasty? Swede? Beef skirt? Onion? You what?? If it wasn’t for the snobbery it could just as well be pickled eggs wrapped in pastry! Or a sausage pie. You could even make a traditional lunch/dessert one by filling half with Haribo and the other half with tomato sauce. Hey presto. A Cornish pastie with the snobbery removed.

Shepherd’s Pie? Forget proper snooty ‘lamb’ with gravy, and that ‘perfect mashed potato’ poncense, it could just as easily be mashed yams with a nice tinned curry underneath. Or Cod in parsley sauce.

Biryani? Well that’s just rice with anything lobbed on top, if people are honest. Stick some Brussels sprouts on top of rice, or if want meat then a packet of cocktail sausages or some corned beef. Hey presto - biryani. Don’t listen to the food snobs, just be ‘honest’ instead!

For something a little different (and reminds me of the Alps)

Pizza tartiflette - no tomatoes, creme fraiche thinned with some white wine for the base and topped with smoked lardons of bacon, onion and potato (cooked beforehand obviously) and finished off with reblouchon cheese.

Not authentic but I suspect a little rosemary might be nice with it

Hey presto. A Cornish pastie with the snobbery removed.

Cornish Pastie is a protected term. What you've got there is a pastie, rendering the rest of your argument moot. Sure you could have a Haribo and tomato sauce pastie if you wanted.

An apple pie might be light years away from being a pork pie, but it's still a bloody pie isn't it.

Thanks to those who pointed out their favorite online deli stores, looks to be some promising stuff to keep me busy there. If I ever have any going spare I'll make sure to give the haggis a try too.

Blue cheese though? No.

Whats the ebay nduja of choice gents ?

off topic, but lasagne made half with mince and half with haggis is ace

An apple pie might be light years away from being a pork pie, but it’s still a bloody pie isn’t it.

You specified ‘flatbread’. Which is unleavened/yeast-less. Rendering the rest of your ‘pizza = anything on flatbread’ argument as useful as calling Quorn sausages, gravy and mashed potato plopped on a nan bread an ‘honest pizza’ 😉

I’m not really disagreeing, just arguing for the fun of it. And anyway, surely the best thing about being British is declaring all foreign food ‘snobbish’ unless it’s properly messed with/re-invented!

https://www.instructables.com/Full-English-Breakfast-Pizza/

What Binners may find hard to understand is that I enjoy a proper pizza every bit as much (maybe more) as he enjoys a proper Gregg’s steak bake or proper English brekky. Furthermore, I will recommend my favourite toppings every part as enthusiastically as he might recommend his favourite innards. Or ‘Binnards’, as he would no doubt remind me. 😙

Yes, even if he is snobbish about foreign foods which don’t come from his local deli. I will not be talked down to like that. Not for my £1 tube of fish paste or my tin of Italian tomatoes. Harumph.

#notostrokedchins
#yestobellyrub

@P7eaven - Apologies for being an arse! 😉

Anyway... as we’ve both been mad busy today and the footy’s on, Mrs Binners said we should get a takeaway tonight. No prizes for guessing what I suggested after this thread

Bizarrely the best pizzas round here are from the curry house. They do tandoori chicken pizzas which are awesome

So I was just wondering if everyone else does this? I ordered a 12” one to myself, knowing that despite being a proper big fat biffa, there’s no way on earth I could finish it

But I always do it as cold pizza is the breakfast of champions

An essential life lesson you learn as a student. Does everybody else do this?

When I was in Como, Italy the other year I had a tallegio cheese and pear pizza. It was divine.

If it is pepperoni and sausage you like then you need to find a good Italian deli.

Guardian pizza link

Not pizza, but the missus served hot homemade scotch eggs using the insides of Richmond Meatfree Sausages and panko breadcrumbs. Gamechanger that one. And bonus future substantial meal for veggies at the pub 😉

If you can’t finish a 12” pizza in one sit in you’re really not trying hard enough matey.

Even my skinny little 10 year old can manage that 🙄

*doublepost*

I probably could finish it, but on general principle I leave myself a slice or two for breakfast

My daughters now do this too. Getting practice in for student life 😃

But I always do it as cold pizza is the breakfast of champions

Does everybody else do this?

Did. Yes. Had to put a stop to it for health and pocket, among other reasons.

Nearly every other week would pack away a (13.5”) large Dominos pepperoni passion, extra cheese and sauce, anchovies, jalapeños and extra-large garlic and herb dip. Always used to leave 2-3 slices for the 1am pre-breakfast redux reflux.

MTB riding-buddy used to go halves on a 2-for-1 midweek deal after a 15 mile ride so we’d eat large one each. Often with a bag of chips. Stupid boys. After a while we realised we were opting for shorter rides 🤣😂

Had a pizza not long ago that had something weird on it but it tasted quite nice. It looked like a grape/gooseberry hybrid.

I mean; Have you stopped for a minute to imagine what the bloke who invented pizza would make of this self-indulgent toss?

Have to agree with you there!

The pizza Margherita is one of the symbols of Italian cuisine throughout the world.

Invented in June 1889 by the Neapolitan pizza maker Raffaele Esposito in honor of Queen Margherita of Savoy, the color combination of its ingredients is not accidental: the red tomato, white mozzarella and green basil, represent the Italian flag.

From wikipedia:

Neapolitan pizza (Italian: pizza napoletana) also known as Naples-style pizza, is a style of pizza made with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. It must be made with either San Marzano tomatoes or Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio, which grow on the volcanic plains to the south of Mount Vesuvius, and Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, a protected designation of origin cheese made with the milk from water buffalo raised in the marshlands of Campania and Lazio in a semi-wild state, or "Fior di Latte di Agerola", a cow milk mozzarella made exclusively in the Agerola comune. Neapolitan pizza is a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) product in Europe, and the art of its making is included on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. This style of pizza gave rise to the New York-style pizza that was first made by Italian immigrants to the United States in the early 20th century.