Rachel’s easy pizza

Everyone loves a slice of this wonderful Italian classic, says Rachel Allen, who shows us how to make our own delicious pizzas from scratch

You know you want to

The clever Ancient Greeks were adding onions, herbs and olive oil to flatbreads thousands of years ago, but for the classic pizza as we know it today, we have to thank an Italian chef by the name of Raffaele Esposito. He created the dough base topped with red tomato sauce, white cheese and green basil — the colours of the Italian flag — in honour of Queen Margherita’s visit to Naples in the late 1880s. A million different variations have been made since, but nonetheless, you can’t walk a hundred metres today without bumping into a classic pizza margherita somewhere.

The pizza — which is thought to be the most popular food in the world — can take on so many different and delicious guises. Each element is really important. A chewy crust, with dark spots of flavour from the really hot oven, forms the base; a juicy (but not too juicy) sweet tomato sauce brings freshness; and smooth, creamy cheese tops it all off — literally. Too much cheese can make the pizza too wet and heavy, while not enough will send it all out of kilter.

Chard is a lovely green; its minerally flavour is really distinctive and works so well on this pizza, far right, which admittedly has more Greek flavours than Italian. The spring onions bring sweetness, while the salty feta is nicely browned in the oven. The lamb works particularly well, but if you have leftover cooked chicken, it would be lovely, too.

And if you like your pizza in a pie, then how about a calzone, also far right? Designed originally to be a ‘walk-around pizza’, the half-moon-shaped calzone is delicious with everything from grilled aubergine slices to pulled pork tucked inside.

Now that’s amore!