Pizza Masterclass at Tozi Italian Restaurant

Me and Chef Nicola with my finished pizza

On Thursday 7th August, I went to a Pizza Masterclass at an Italian restaurant called Tozi which is in Victoria, London.

Once everybody had arrived, we found somewhere to sit at the table and our teacher Nicola explained and demonstrated the different techniques for preparing the pizza dough.

Firstly, we were each given a bowl of flour and were told to make a well in the middle

.

 Then Nicola showed us to add a little bit of water at a time and bring the flour together. 

This was how we began our dough. Then we added some salt. Next we had to add some yeast bit by bit to mix into the dough. It was quite hard work as the water made the dough sticky and it was difficult to get it all off my fingers! Finally Nicola poured over a little bit of olive oil and we took our dough out of the bowl and began to knead it.

 

Nicola told us the dough needed to rise for an hour so he bought us some that he had made earlier.

Nicola cut off some chunks of dough and instructed us to roll them into little balls and then pull the dough together at the top. He told us that this dough would have to set for 10 hours or more! So he took that dough away and brought us some that had already set for that long.

Next we went to the kitchen area and once again kneaded the dough

Nicola taught us how to flatten it out and make it bigger.

After that we spread tomato sauce over our pizza base

Finally we added our toppings and mozzarella cheese. I chose some lovely roasted peppers.

At last Nicola put our pizzas into a big pizza oven. Once they had cooked and cooled down we could eat them.

Afterwards we made another one to take home and this time I tried some salami but it was a little bit too spicy for me!!!