Fried pizza with aubergines and mozzarella

Fried pizza is all the craze now, and I decided to make a few of those as well. But here comes a serious WARNING! Be very careful at all times when handling those hot pans! They have been to a very hot oven, and that should not be forgotten. The VegHog wasn't careful enough and scorched its hand severely enough to have to visit a doctor! I'm fine again, and this injury hasn't scared me away from making more fried pizzas as they were absolutely delicious. The frying adds a certain smokiness to the base and makes it crispier than you would achieve in a normal oven.

If you got curious about fried pizza, I would recommend you to read also this Guardian article. There are many good tips for making a good fried pizza. 

So here's how I made my first fried pizza ever.

Spelt pizza crust:

It of course depends on the size of your pan, how many pizzas you'll get out of this amount of dough, but it should be at least a few small ones. And this time I made my crust a bit thicker than usual.

2 tbsp dry yeast

400 g spelt flour

2 tsp salt

350 ml lukewarm water

3 tbsp olive oil

First make the crust. I made a spelt crust, because I recently bought spelt flour in bulk. You could also make a half spelt, half wheat crust, which is what I normally make.

Toppings:

4 tomatoes (mine were tomato tigerellas from my own garden)

1 red onion

1 garlic clove

½ tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp salt

Fresh basil leaves

200 g buffalo mozzarella

4 mini aubergines

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp oregano

What to do:

Make a quick basic tomato sauce by chopping the onion, garlic and tomatoes finely and cooking them in olive oil until the flavours blend nicely. Season the sauce with salt and pepper. You can also make a pizza without a tomato sauce and just put some tomato slices on the base. That is just as good, only a bit different.

Roast the mini aubergine slices brushed with olive oil and oregano at 220C for about 10 minutes until tender and golden brown.

Heat a non-stick frying pan with a metal handle (it has to be able to take the heat of the oven) very hot and also heat the grill setting of the oven as hot as possible. Then place the stretched pizza dough and the toppings into the pan. I put my toppings onto the base in this order: tomato sauce, some mozzarella (more will be put on after the baking), basil leaves and roasted aubergines.

Leave the pizza in the pan until the crust gets slightly brown below and then pop the whole thing into the oven under the grill for a further couple of minutes. My grill doesn't get that hot, so I had to leave the pizza for about five minutes to get nice colour. The first frying bit is also only a few minutes, so it's a very quick way to make a tasty pizza.

When the pizza comes out of the oven, tear some buffalo mozzarella on the top and serve, but still be careful with that pan! I also made a different one with extra heirloom tomato slices on the top.

Have you tried this sort of pizza before, and what do you think of the idea?

Your VegHog