Food brings people together! Fact! I know I am always banging on about this, but it worries me that fewer and fewer people make the time to cook good food and then take the time to sit down together to eat as a family or with friends.

The food doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t matter if your not a very cook or even if you just order in, what is important is sitting round the table, talking, laughing and listening to each other.

We eat together pretty much ever day as a family, even when it is just me and Hubby at home, we still bother to set the table and we sit over a glass or two of wine and we talk. There is so little communication done face to face now, we all talk to our friends and loved ones via Facebook, Twitter, Email and Text, but you can not beat good old fashioned nattering.

One of our favourite things to do as a family at the weekend is to make pizza, I make the dough, every one of us gathers round to design and top our pizza’s with our chosen toppings and Hubby bakes them.

I think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they top their pizza, Luca always makes a smiley face on his, just like him, happy and smiley. Hubby always goes for heaps of toppings, piling up the flavours and always adds something hot and spicy. Me, well like I do everything in life, my pizza is well thought out, looks nice and is always neat, tidy and symmetrical, anal, just like me, LOL !

I remember Jasmine making pizza’s for us, she would always use her homemade passata, something I hope to do this summer if all goes well with our tomatoes in the greenhouse!

So how ever you like yours, why not knock up some dough, cover your table with bowls and bowls of lots of yummy toppings and get family and friends together and have some fun.

Buon appetito

Makes 6 – 8 medium-sized pizza’s or 4 really big ones

800g strong white bread flour
200g fine ground semolina
1 level teaspoon fine sea salt
2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
650ml lukewarm water

The recipe suggest’s that you pile the flours and the salt on to a clean surface and make a 7 inch well in the centre. Add your yeast and sugar to the tepid water, mix it up with a fork and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork and a circular movement, slowly bring in the flour from the inner edge and mix into the water. It will look like stodgy porridge – continue to mix, bringing in all of the flour. When the dough comes together and becomes too hard to mix with your fork, flour your hands and begin to pat into a ball. Knead the dough by rolling it backwards and forwards, using your left hand to stretch the dough towards you and the right hand to push the dough way from you at the same time. Repeat this for 10 minutes until you have a smooth springy soft dough.

However, if you don’t feel brave enough to do this, or fancy the mess, if you have a mixer with a dough hook, put your flours and salt into the bowl, make a well in the middle, turn on the machine and slowly add the yeast, sugar and tepid water that you have prepared as above. When the mixture comes to a nice dough you can either let the machine do all the work and leave it kneading, or I like to let the machine do the first 5 minutes on a slow setting and then I finish the last five minutes by hand, that way you can tell when your dough is ready.

When your dough is ready, put it into a bowl and flour the top of your dough, cover it with clingfilm and let it rest for at least 15 minutes at room temperature. This will make it easier to roll it thinly. Now divide the dough int as many balls as you want to make pizza’s.

Its a good idea to roll your pizza’s out 15 to 30 minutes before you start to cook them. If you want to work more in advance, its better to keep the dough in clingfilm in the fridge rather than rather than having rolled-out pizza dough left on the side for hours drying out. We like to use our’s fresh, but eiher way they will be yummy.

Take a piece of the dough, dust your work surface and the dough with a little flour, roll it out into a rough circle about 1/4 inch thick. Tear off an appropriately sized piece of tinfoil, rub it with olive oil, dust it well with flour flour and place the pizza base on top. Continue doing the same with the other pieces and then, if you dust them with a little flour, you can pile them un into a stack, cover then with clingfilm an put them into the fridge (we don’t bother with this, by this point Hubby has put a layer of passata on each one and we are all gathered round designing our toppings).

When you are ready to cook them, preheat the oven to 250c, 500f, gas 9.

At this stage you can apply your toppings. Remember: less is more, a lesson certain members of my family could do with learning, you don’t want a soggy pizza! When you are all topped and ready to go, place the pizza with the foil onto the bottom shelf of your oven, cook for 7 to 10 minutes, until the pizza’s are golden and crispy.

Serve with a crispy green salad, a beer or a glass of wine and have fun.

It is also a great way to use up the left overs in your fridge, those last few mushrooms, that one green pepper, all those little bits of left over cheese’s that you keep meaning to use up, bung them all on your pizza !