Tuna Pizza

We are really happy to share our first ever pizza recipe with you!

We’ve actually received quite a lot of requests for both pizza dough and pizza topping recipes over the last few years, and somehow we’ve just not been able to come up with one that we liked enough to share with you guys until now.

Below you’ll find instructions for making the dough from scratch. It might sound like a lot of work to you if you’ve never done it before, but pizza dough actually requires just a handful of ingredients, a bit of kneading and some time for proofing. Also it’s really so much tastier than the premade ones you can get from the stores.

As for the topping, since this is the first time we are doing a pizza recipe we thought we’ll go a bit Maldivian on it, with some canned tuna, onion, and scotch bonnet, along with tomatoes, bell peppers and a whole lot of cheese.

And as for the pizza sauce, we used the very yummy Heinz Pizza Sauce, which we got from one of our partners S&O (Standard & Origin). Heinz Pizza Sauce is tangy, slightly sweet and comes with hints of onion, parsley and basil. We thought it worked really well with the tuna.

Makes: Two 10 inch pizzas.

Ingredients for the dough:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 tsp. instant yeast
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 ½ cups flour
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 tbsp. olive oil

Ingredients for the topping:

• 1 small onion
• ½ scotch bonnet pepper (or to taste)
• 1 tbsp. oil
• 1 tuna can (180g, drained and flaked)
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. ground black pepper
• 2 large tomatoes
• ½ green bell pepper
• 10 olives
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 8 tbsp. Heinz Pizza Sauce

Instructions:

1. Add the warm water to a small bowl (insert a clean finger into the water to check the temperature. It should feel barely warm. If it’s too hot you could kill the yeast and if it’s too cold the yeast might not get activated). Add the yeast and sugar, mix to combine and leave it for around 5 minutes or until the mixture forms bubbles and you get a yeasty smell. If you don’t get the bubbles, it means the yeast is dead and you’ll have to start over with some fresher yeast.
2. Sift in the flour and salt in to a large bowl. Add the olive oil too. Then pour the water, sugar and yeast mixture into the flour mixture. Give it a good mix using a large spoon until it comes together in a sticky dough.
3. Then dust a clean surface with a little flour (like a quarter of a tablespoon maximum) and place the dough on top of it and start kneading. To knead, keep folding the dough onto itself. Put a timer on and knead for 10 minutes. It’s still going to be slightly sticky, so you can add just a little bit more flour (like a quarter tablespoon) if it bothers you. When kneaded, the dough should look smooth and feel just a little bit tacky.
4. Rub a bit of oil on the insides of a large bowl and place the dough in it. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a towel and let the dough rise for 1 and ½ hours or until it doubles in size.
5. When the 1 and ½ hours is up, lightly flour a clean surface, place the dough on it, punch it down a few times, and then knead the dough gently for around a minute. Then put it back in the oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a towel and let the dough rise again for another 30 minutes.
6. While the dough rises, start preparing the topping by dicing the onion and slicing the scotch bonnet pepper thinly.
7. Heat the oil in a medium pot and add the onion and the scotch bonnet pepper. Cook until the onions soften and you can see a hint of gold on them.
8. Add the tuna to the pot along with the salt and pepper. Give it a good mix and let the mixture cook for around 45 seconds. Then set it aside and let it cool down.
9. Slice the tomatoes into thin circles and cut the bell pepper into thin strips. Slice the olives into circles too. If your cheese isn’t shredded, you can shred it at this stage.
10. Preheat the oven at 230 degrees Celsius and prepare a sheet pan or tray for baking the pizza. We used a sheet pan and sprinkled around ½ tsp. corn flour on it. You can skip the corn flour if you don’t have it, but it really does make the pizza’s bottom very nice and crispy.
11. Now back to the dough (we made two 10 inch pizzas, so our instructions are for doing that). After the second rising time is over, dust your fingers with a little bit of flour and punch down the dough. Divide the dough into two equal portions. Take one of the portions and either by using your fingers or your rolling pin, shape it into a circle. Aim for a diameter of around 10 and ½ inches. Place this on your sheet pan or tray. Fold the edges of the circle so that they form a slightly raised edge.
12. Spread 4 tbsp. of Heinz Pizza Sauce on the dough inside the raised edge; do this lightly, try not to push the sauce into the dough.
13. Then sprinkle it with 1/3 cup shredded mozzarella cheese. Then place half of the tuna mixture you prepared before on top of the mozzarella cheese; spread it evenly. Then add ½ cup of shredded cheddar cheese on top of the tuna mixture. Then neatly arrange half of your sliced tomatoes on top of the cheddar cheese layer. And on top of the tomatoes, arrange half of your bell peppers nicely. Then place 2/3 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese on top of the bell peppers. Then finally, neatly arrange half of your olive slices.
14. Place the tray or sheet pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake (at 230 degrees Celsius) for 15 minutes or until the crust and cheese looks golden.
15. While the first pizza is baking, repeat steps 11 to 13 to prepare the next pizza, and then bake it as described in step 14.

Note: If you can’t find Heinz Pizza Sauce from a shop near you, contact 301 5533 or 301 5522.