Sweet Caramelised Onion Pizza with Garlic Bread

Cooking Adventure number #6 – Sweet Caramelised Onion Pizza with Garlic Bread

For my sixth main ingredient, my friend selected ‘cheese’. I researched and selected three recipes including cheese puffs, ‘best-ever’ macaroni cheese and caramelised onion pizza. All recipes look flavoursome however, I chose Caramelised Onion Pizza because this recipe was made on my favourite cooking competition, Masterchef , and I wanted to recreate a dish which was loved by the judges and voted one of the best recipes on Masterchef. Also, my mum knew how to make the pizza base and I wanted to learn how to make it. The ingredients for Caramelised Onion Pizza are:

Tomato Paste

Onion

Rosemary

Butter

Kalamata Olives

Feta

Brown Sugar

Plain Flour

Olive Oil

Salt

Yeast

Lukewarm Water (not shown)

White Sugar

It took me one hour in total to prepare all the ingredients. This included measuring, cutting and washing all ingredients for the presentation photo. With so few ingredients, I thought it would be pretty quick to do the preparation but I was wrong. The quantity made the preparation longer but I managed to finish it.

Home-made Pizza Dough

This is me mixing the yeast mixture. The mixture had yeast, lukewarm water (water that is slightly warm) and white sugar. The yeast smelt like vomit and I wondered if anyone has ate it alone. I had to mix the mixture for around two minutes but I lost track of time and kept mixing until my mother asked me if I’d finished mixing. Once finished, I placed the cling wrap onto the container and waited for the mixture to rise. The cling wrap was annoying me because it wouldn’t stick to the sides of the container and it took me so many times to get the right size and stick it as well. Finally my mother stuck the cling wrap onto the container in ONE SHOT!

After five minutes of waiting, the yeast mixture rose up to the lip of the bowl, until I took off the cling wrap and it sunk five centimetres, but it still looked like it rose quite a fair bit. It still smelt like someone had vomited in the yeast mixture but I hoped it didn’t smell like this at the end.

While I was waiting for the yeast mixture to rise, I made the other mixture which contained flour and salt which I had to mix up and then wait for the yeast mixture to finishing rising. Once the yeast mixture was finished, I poured it into the other mixture. Although the top of the yeast mixture was frothy, the bottom mixture was still runny but that’s what it’s supposed to be from the recipe’s description of the yeast mixture.

The recipe told me to use an electric mixer to mix all the yeast mixture and the other mixture together but it didn’t seem to work. Instead of the electric mixer mixing it together, it was not doing anything except making flour fly around the bowl.

This is a photo of the dough mixture mixed by the electric mixer. I wasn’t satisfied with the end result so I instead used the old –fashion mixing technique, kneading.

This is me kneading the unfinished dough. It was a lot harder to do because you had to put lots of power and force to make the dough nice and smooth. I believe it looked better than the electric mixer version.

Although kneading the dough took more time, the dough actually turned from being a lumpy and ‘crater’ filled dough into a lovely smooth dough which I imagined from the beginning of this recipe. It still had that awful smell of yeast in the dough but I still hoped the smell would be gone. I had flour all over my arms, hands and some small patches on my face!

After kneading the dough, I had to put it into bowls, put cling wrap over it and let it rest at the heater for one hour. Putting the cling wrap on wasn’t hard for some reason and it managed to stick to the bowl. While the dough was resting, I began caramelising the onion for the pizza.

This is me frying the onions before putting the brown sugar and rosemary into the frying pan. I was supposed to use olive oil for my frying but since I had lots of butter left over, I used butter instead. The recipe originally said to put thyme in but rosemary had a nicer scent and taste so I replaced thyme with rosemary.

Once I’d put in the brown sugar and rosemary, it smelled so beautiful and sweet; I could just eat these onions for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had to keep stirring the onions around or else the sugar on the onions would burn and ruin the whole dish. The kitchen smelt like an Italian restaurant which was fantastic!

After one hour, I left the onions and rolled out the dough. It was puffy and it didn’t have the yeast odour anymore which I was extremely happy about. My first attempt at rolling out the dough was terrible, although the dough was flat, it turned into an abnormal shape. My second attempt turned out alright, it was still flat but this time it was an oval shaped base. My third attempt was perfect, flat and circular!

After rolling the dough, it was TOPPING TIME! The order of topping from base to top was:

1. Tomato Paste

2. Caramelised Onion

3. Kalamata Olives

4. Feta

Tomato Paste wasn’t on the recipe but pizza without paste is so plain so I bought tomato paste while I was shopping. At first, spreading the tomato paste was tricky; trying to get an even layer of paste around the base, but I managed to do it.

Next topping was the caramelised onion. I wanted to just eat the onion but thought maybe the onion would taste even better on the pizza, with other toppings. It was easy to put on the pizza; just drop it anywhere on the base.

Next topping was the kalamata olives. These olives were my favourite but for some reason they were more salty than normal but with the onion it would perhaps even the taste out. Since the olives were really big when I bought them, I had to cut them in half so they looked like the olives on pizzas from the shops.

The last topping was feta, my main ingredient. The feta was very hard when I bought it but since I left it out for around one hour, it softened and it was easier to break smaller pieces so I could spread the feta around the pizza. After finishing the topping part, I placed the pizzas into the oven for 30 minutes at 200 degrees centigrade.

Once the 30 minutes finished, the pizzas were golden and tasty. The feta had been cooked with a rustic edge to each piece, the olives had shrunk in size and the onions had been browned even more. I just couldn’t wait to dig my teeth into one slice. For the presentation photo, I had to cut the best pizza slice and I was terrible at cutting slices but it wasn’t hard at all after my mother showed me how to cut it: halves, quarters, eighths then sixteenths. I’d learnt so many things in just 2 hours.

When there’s pizza there has to be garlic bread. As a tradition, when my mum makes pizza she usually buys garlic bread as a side. Usually I would make it but since I didn’t have enough time, I just bought the cheapest garlic bread. They were cooked with the pizzas for 12 minutes and they came out just perfect: the garlic butter had melted and the bread was golden brown and crispy. Hopefully it tasted like home-made garlic bread. Cutting the bread was easier than cutting pizza slices but I had to cut two perfect slices of garlic bread for the presentation photo. Luckily, there were 12 great slices but only 2 were the best looking ones.

The finished product looked so professional and beautiful; it made me feel like a true Italian chef. I was the first person to take a bite of the pizza, it was scrumptious and the onion just melted in my mouth. With the salty taste of olives and feta, plus the sweet caramelised onion, the flavours were balanced out. The garlic bread was a stunner - it was crispy and the garlic butter melted in my mouth like the onions did. I wished it was home-cooked but it was delicious anyway. My mother didn’t like how the onion was caramelised and said it ruined the recipe but she doesn’t like sweet food so it wasn’t an insult. My dad really liked the pizza and garlic bread saying it was magnificent. My cousin and sister both liked the onion and garlic bread as well. The whole evening was tremendous; I have learnt so many things like how to make pizza bases and how to cut the pizza slices which will hopefully stay in my mind forever. I can’t wait for the seventh recipe!!!

This recipe was taken from the Herald Sun’s Masterchef liftout.

Q: What types of pizza(s) do you like and why?

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