An unmitigated disaster!

Not sure if this is a confession or a cry for help. Probably the latter.

I like to think I am a pretty good cook, not a chef and definitely not a baker, but I can put on a dinner party for 10-12 without breaking into a sweat. I can brai and hold my own with my South African mates and have invited people for biryani and chicken/lamb tikka on Christmas Eve together with volunteering to help my mate cater for friends and family on Christmas Day.

Tonight however I am hanging my head in shame. I bought a pizza stone for the BBQ and a pizza paddle. I made my own dough, enjoying the kneading and knocking out process (yes my world has shrunk since retirement!) all good. Squished it out by hand into a fairly decent thin round, topped with spicy tomato, mozzarella, pepperoni, mushrooms, red onion. At this point I was looking fairly smug – how the mighty fall!

The bloody thing stuck to the paddle big time. The stone was hot but I could not get the pizza off the paddle and onto the hot stone. I had oiled the paddle, then put a good dusting of flour but it did not move. Resorting to a spatula after all else failed created a heap of dough and topping that simply put was either burned or raw. If you have ever made an omelette that tuned out like scrambled egg with bits in it you will know whereI am coming from! I may have destroyed the relatively expensive pizza stone on its first outing.

I remain convinced my dough was good and my topping tasty but if anyone reading this can tell me how the hell to get the pizza off the paddle and onto the stone I would be very grateful! And any tips on how to clean the stone would not go amiss.

Perhaps pizza is a dish meant to be eaten in restuarants? My main reason for launching into this was not really about pizza but because I read that a pizza stone makes excellent naan bread if you don’t have a tandoori oven (who does?) so stay tuned for the next disaster!