Keep it simple! The biggest mistake is to try and cram too many different toppings on a Pizza. The best Pizzas are simple, just a few well chosen and delicious toppings.

A good sauce base. It needs to be a bit thinner than Tomato puree, but not too thin or you'll lose flavour and waterlog your base. For special events where we know the number of guests we make our own sauce using slow roasted tomato and red pepper with a few onions, Oregano and Basil. Blend this and reduce into a thick sauce and spread a thin layer to the top of the base.  Experiment at home with ingredients to give a nice intense flavour and thick consistency. Remember too wet and the flavour will be thin and you will waterlog your base.

Temperature! That oven has got to be hot, hot ,hot! The floor of our wood fired oven will be at between 370 degrees C and 400 degrees C when we cook pizza. You will not be able to get a domestic oven to anywhere near that temperature. If you want to get as good a result as you can from a domestic oven then invest in a Pizza stone which you place in your oven to heat up. Turn the oven up to it's maximum and don't take the stone out of the oven to put the Pizza

A Thin base - If your base is too thick and heavy, the dough will never cook and crisp befoore the toppings are burnt.

Well it was a wet weekend at Kedleston, but we had a good time and made some more people happy with our lovely Pizzas. We also introduced our new homemade Focaccia and wood fired bacon buttied for breakfast. They are yummy, a little drizzle of chilli oil on the focaccia before it pops into the oven to get lightly toasted, fill it with fresh wood fired bacon and add brown or red sauce as required.

Pizza has some bad press and it is not entirely fair. It is true that the Pizza most of us get to eat is either a) a frozen, cardboard like disc with some white grated plastic and red sauce on top. or b)A fat saturated bath sponge of a plateful, crammed with empty calories and saturated fats. But real traditional Pizza is not like that at all and can be a healthy food  as well as being the perfect food for sharing. A certain high street Pizza restaurant makes their deep pan Pizza using no less than 800g of dough! That is over 1 1/2 pounds of dough! Guess what the cheapest ingredient in a Pizza is? The dough of course. Now traditionally, Pizzas are made with a thin base (our large Pizza uses no more than 180g of dough, rolled out to about 3mm thin) and then topped with good quality fresh ingredients, including vegetables and not too heavy on the cheese. Healthy balanced and nutritious!

After a successful and suprisingly bright day at the races last weekend. We move on to Keddleston Hall near Derby for the Craft and Country Fair on Saturday and Sunday. Why not come along for a great family day out and we'll be serving our fantastic homemade Focaccia and wood fired Bacon butties or breakfast Pizza in the mornings. Then choose from our fabulous range of large Pizzas or Bambino Pizzas for the smaller appetite, and Garlic bread to die for. See you there.

Following a cold, wet and windy Easter weekend at the All About Dogs show we move on to a Point to Point meeting at High Easter near Stansted this weekend. Saturday 14th April and signposted from the A120 near High Easter, join us for some tasty Pizza and great horse racing.