Pizza night

Every so often Mum will decide to fire up the brick oven, and this always means pizza night.

When we were growing up in Kalangadoo, we had a huge brick oven out the back yard. Mum used to make a massive amount of bread dough, which made about 22 loaves of bread. We were treated to home made bread and other scrumptious treats like empanada. Everyone in town would have known Mum was cooking bread, with the waft of fresh bread permeating from our backyard. We even had one particular neighbour who always would make her way down to visit on these days, we could see her coming and knew she was coming to scab a loaf of bread! Its one of the things we still laugh about today.

Last year, Mum and Dad decided to build a wood fired brick oven in the backyard of their current home. They had help from family and friends, and it was a great day. Old friends of the family came over from Penola to help, as Dad had helped them build one at their house years earlier.

A tradie friend of Dads came to help, as he was interested in how it was done. He did most of the building, and Dad tried to remember how it all went together, and Mum putting her two bobs worth in, on how she wanted it. The one they built is a quarter the size of the old one, she doesn't need to cook for a family of seven anymore.

Dad removing the fire into a wheelbarrow and Mum getting
a wet cloth to wipe the ash off the bottom, ready for the pizza
to go straight on the hot bricks.

We turn up at Mums, we don't bring anything. She has made pizza dough, and has all the makings out in the shed, where she has tables set up to roll out dough and make our own.

Before the pizza goes in, and bit of flour is thrown on to the bottom of the oven to see how hot the oven is. If the flour burns too quickly, the oven is too hot.

We eat pizza until we are bursting at the seems, and it doesn't matter how full we are, there is always room for Mums strawberry dessert pizza. Its delicious.

She puts strawberry jam on the base, then cream cheese with vanilla, topped with fresh strawberries. We have done cream cheese, banana and choc chips before, its just as good. I'm thinking I might try some mini marshmallows on it next time.

Mmmmmm!