Having learned that the extra effort is not justified by any difference in results, I bought prepared pizza bases to put my own toppings on. First was the tomato paste. I didn’t have any intended for the task, but I did have a jar of ragu, so I spread that over the bases instead. Next I used Italian pepperoni. It came in large slices, but I halved them and laid them in an elegant circular pattern. Then I halved black olives and put them in the gaps between the pepperoni. Then green olives treated similarly. Next I chopped French string beans into about half-inch pieces and scattered them on top. Then came chopped purple onions and half a rough-cut field mushroom. I had mozzarella left, so I added that, and finally came grated manchego sheep’s cheese to cover everything.
It had just over ten minutes on my pizza pan, the one with the holes in that I’d pre-heated first. While my guests were eating the first one, I cooked a second, identical one, so we had two of them between three of us. They were beautifully done, and much better than restaurant pizzas, largely because the bases were crisper and crunchier. I gave my visitors miso-vegetable soup while they waited for the first pizza to cook, and afterwards I served fresh blueberries on a bed of Muller light blueberry yoghurt. It was a good combination, and the blueberries were very juicy.