Pizza and Mozzarella making!

On Thursday 15th September, Simon, David (Simon’s brother) and I headed out to Muriwai for one of The Gourmet Gannet’s Pizza and Mozzarella making culinary workshops.  Simon and I had been out before for an English Pork Pie making class and were pretty excited to be going back.  We had heaps of fun and it was surprisingly easy.


Allison taught us to make pizza dough from scratch, without measuring the ingredients and to mix everything by hand.  This was great because it means we can now make pizza dough with whatever quantity of flour we like (as I did tonight to use up our leftover mozzarella) and we know what consistency we want to get it to.  I’ve made a little video which you can watch at the bottom of this post which outlines the process :)


While the pizza dough was proving (growing in size) we made our mozzarella.  This looked pretty gross while we were splitting the curds and whey of the milk, but was fun once we had it to the stage where you stretch it out and make your balls of cheese.  Once we had finished making the cheese it was time to get our dough into shape for the base, topped with sauce and our cheese and put into the oven to bake.  When the pizzas were ready we gave them a quick sprinkle with basil, salt, pepper and some olive oil then cut them up and enjoyed the fruits of our labour along with the delicious red wine that Alison opened for Simon’s birthday.


We had left over cheese to take home and because I was a bit over the top with my flour estimate, I had enough dough to take home and make some more pizzas the next day :)

If you are interested in making your own cheese you can get a kit from a company called ‘Mad Millie’ which has everything you need to make mozzarella, ricotta and mascarpone.  I’ve got myself a kit and think I might give making ricotta a try next.

And, if you want to go to a cooking class head along to The Gourmet Gannet website to book one.  While you’re at it check out Alison’s awesome blog ‘Pease Pudding’ too.