Kris: I really love the flavour that beer adds to a pizza dough. I have experimented with different beers and Coopers Sparkling Ale  always tastes the best. It’s also a great match with pizza that has a tomato sauce and some spice from chili or pepperoni. It is bottled conditioned and still contains some yeast, which helps the dough to rise, particularly if you use the chunky, yeasty bits from the bottom of the bottle. Hefeweizen also works well in this recipe.

Caroline: I thought this was an amazing idea! Imagine if  you didn’t have baking yeast on hand, you could make dough with just BEER??  We tried the recipe first using only the yeast from the beer, unfortunately, it went a bit wonky so we started over. It needed a bit more added  yeast to rise properly. All part of the fun…

 Beer Pizza Dough

2 1/2 – 3 cups plain organic flour

1 teaspoon of yeast

200ml Coopers Sparkling Ale

1 Tbs sugar

1 Tbs salt

2 Tbs olive oil

50ml warm water

Method

Combine the yeast and warm water in a small bowl and whisk

Place the beer, olive oil, salt and sugar in a bowl and whisk

After a few minutes add the yeast

Slowly sift the flour in to the liquid and combine until you make the dough

Place the dough on a floured bench and knead for five minutes

Drizzle some olive oil into the bowl and place the dough back into the bowl

Cover with cling wrap and leave in a warm place until it has doubled in size

Place the dough on a lightly floured bench and push down on it

Divide into 4 pieces

Roll out and top with tomato sauce and your favourite toppings

Bake until golden

Kris: We had some pecorino and caper leaves from Bottega Rotolo. This was the first time I had tasted the caper leaves, which were super salty and really fresh tasting.I just plucked them and placed them on the pizza after it had come out of the oven.

Kris : We used  roast chicken, sautéed leek, anchovies, pecorino, goat’s fetta, caper leaves and fresh oregano from the garden on the pizzas. That’s the great thing about pizza, you can use whatever you have available. The pizza crust was crisp and wasn’t too thick or doughy, just the way I like it. The Coopers sparkling ale was a great match, I also like Marzens with pizza.The sweet, caramel in the malt works well with home made tomato sauce.