I love homemade pizza but I often find myself struggling to work up the energy to do it the "proper" way - with yeast. I tried a naan bread recipe a while back and realised how great it would be as a pizza base. I use the BBC recipe by Anjum Anand, and it really is a simple, quick and easy way of making pizza (and of course, naan bread!!!) I get two 12" pizza bases from one batch of this dough, but I roll them extremely thin because that's how we like our pizzas.
Makes 5 naan breads or 2 very thin 12" pizza bases, or 1 thin crust/medium 12" pizza base:
250g/9oz plain flour
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
110-130ml milk
2 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
1) Sift the flour (if you can be bothered - I rarely do) into a bowl with the sugar, salt and baking powder. Mix together with clean hands.
2) Make a well in the centre of the dry mixture, and pour in the milk and oil. Take a fork or small spoon and gently begin to stir the dry ingredients in from the outside into the centre.
3) Once the mixture starts forming together, you may want to flour your hands and begin to knead it together. If it's too sticky at this stage, keep adding flour a little at a time until it's a workable texture.
4) Knead it for as long as you can be bothered (I rarely knead it for more than a few minutes) and set it aside until you're ready to use it.
5) Take your dough and split it into sections depending on how many pizzas you want to make. Flour a rolling pin and roll out your pizzas.
These are now ready to turn into pizzas! Spread one tablespoon of olive oil onto the uncooked pizza base. This stops the tomato sauce from making the pizza base soggy. Then spread your pizza sauce (you could make your own, but I just use tomato paste) over the base. Then add your cheese, and any toppings you fancy. I used the sausage mixture from the Jamie Oliver sausage fusili recipe (posted here on 24th November 2011). Here you can see an uncooked version next to a cooked version! These went into a preheated oven for about 10 minutes on about 200 degrees centigrade.
The original recipe for the naan bread can be found on the BBC website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/naan_86626
