If you’re bored of the same old breakfast – be it scrambled egg, porridge, or the classic avo on toast – shake things up a bit with a pizza.
No, not that cold leftover pizza in your fridge (although that is always delicious, isn’t it?) – rather, Gordon Ramsay’s breakfast specialty, featuring egg, asparagus, mushrooms, and a whole lot of seasoning.
Whip it up on a weekday to get your morning off to a good start, or save for a weekend treat. You can watch Ramsay cook it here if you need a little help, too.
You will need:
For the pizza dough – this will make four bases:
(That is, of course, unless you want to buy a ready-made pizza base – we know what we’ll be doing)
2 x 7g sachets dried yeast
1 tbsp golden caster sugar
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
500g strong bread flour or Italian ‘00’ flour
1 tbsp fine sea salt
For the topping – this is just for one pizza:
4 eggs
2 tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
2 tbsp crème fraiche
1 shallot, sliced
6 green asparagus spears, sliced
4 mushrooms, medium size, sliced
¼ cup green olives, halved
4 basil leaves, sliced
2 sprigs of oregano
1 pinch of red chili flakes
Method:
For the pizza dough:
Mix together the yeast and sugar with 325ml warm water and leave for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, sift the flour into a mixing bowl, add the salt and make a well in the middle. Pour the oil into the well, followed by the yeast mix. Using a spoon, bring the flour into the middle from the sides, mixing slowly, bit by bit, until a dough begins to form. Once you reach this stage, work the rest together with your hands.
When combined, tip the dough onto a floured work surface and knead for 10 minutes until smooth. Clean out your mixing bowl, dust it with flour and put the dough back into the bowl. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for about one hour until doubled in size.
When the dough is risen, punch out the air and tip on to a floured work surface. Knead the dough for 1–2 minutes to push out any excess air, then wrap in cling film and chill. Divide into four equal balls. Use them all for a pizza feast, or keep the others chilling in the fridge.
For the topping:
Remove the pizza dough ball from the fridge and let it warm to room temperature.
Preheat a Breville Pizza Oven to the New York style setting – well, this is what Ramsay did. If you don’t have one, warm up the oven to 200C.
Dust plain flour onto a flat surface and put the room temperature pizza dough on it. Sprinkle more flour on the top of the dough. Using a dowel or rolling pin, roll the dough out similar to pie dough, to about ¼ inch thickness. The dough should be about 8-10 inches wide.
To keep the dough from puffing up in the oven, use a fork to poke the dough several times so when it bakes it will be able to release air from inside.
Scoop the pizza dough from the flat surface and place into the oven. It’s probably easier to follow the steps in this recipe – and cook it for 10 minutes. Keep an eye on the dough and rotate if necessary so it will cook evenly and not burn. Remove from oven onto plate.
Heat a medium saute pan on medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil. When hot, add the sliced shallots and sliced mushrooms. Season well with salt and cracked pepper and stir with a wooden spoon occasionally for 3-4 minutes or until the mushrooms start to turn golden brown and the shallots become translucent.
Add the sliced asparagus, olives, chilli flakes and herbs. Cook for two minutes and then turn off the heat.
Meanwhile, crack the eggs into a cold nonstick saucepan. Stir with a wooden spoon to break up the egg yolks.
Put the pan onto a low to medium heat and continuously stir for one minute. Add a few cubes of butter, then remove the pot from the heat while still stirring the eggs for 30 seconds.
Put the pan back on the heat and stir again for one minute while adding a few more cubes of butter. Remove from the heat again while stirring the eggs. At this point the eggs should be starting to coagulate.
Keep repeating this one minute on, 30 seconds off routine while slowly adding butter until the butter runs out and the eggs seem thickened. When you are able to take a scoop of eggs and hold the spoon up to eye view and the eggs have height to them add creme fraiche and salt and pepper to taste.
Pour the scrambled eggs onto the cooked pizza dough and then the mushroom mixture onto the eggs. Slice and serve!