My New Year's Resolution - Pizza, Calzone and Focaccia at the Italian School of Cooking

For anyone who follows my blog they may realise that I have a slight obsession with pizza! I fell in love with proper pizza the day I moved to Italy. The thin bases covered with the most amazing toppings were a revelation to a 19 year old who up until then was used to eating the ones that came out of boxes. So on moving back to Dublin I was constantly on the lookout for great pizzas places. And these days I have my favourite places to go in Ireland that fulfill my pizza cravings. But for my New Year's resolution I decided to try my hand at learning to make my own. Probably a bit of a cheat as it's a fun resolution to keep!!

So who better to teach me the skills than the lovely group at the Italian School of Cooking. On arriving we were treated to samples of bruschetta and good quality italian products which went down a treat seeing as all that was left were a few crumbs in the baskets. Then it was down to the hard work. We were shown how to make and knead the dough which was surprisingly easy but it does involve a bit of elbow grease!

What also surprised me was the sheer number of different things you can make out of the one dough. First off we made a margarita pizza and a calzone which I was very happy with as I ADORE calzones. The oozing cheese with mushrooms and ham you cant beat it!!

We then went on to make focaccia which is also very versatile as you can make it plain with just salt and rosemary or you can dress it up with tomatoes and mozzarella and make focaccia ripena which is just a filling between two layers of focaccia. Finally we made 'Treccia' Bread which can be done by twisting two ropes of dough together or as Guiseppe showed us by rolling out the dough, filling it with mozzarella and twisting the dough over it. It's both delicious and impressive looking.

 

So Saturday morning was a morning very well spent. Guiseppe and his team know what they are talking about, put everyone at ease and make cooking italian style very easy. I got to meet some lovely people, have a good laugh and come away with skills that I know I will put to good use! Well that's my intention anyway. Oh and also did I mention that we got to eat everything we made!!

For more info on the Italian School of Cooking and all their classes have a look here.