Romans

Planning a bit of a Roman theme this week – were following the Big Roman Dig on Channel 4. It’s quite a good follow up to our trip to Bath. There is a venue in our area taking part in some reconstruction so we will be visiting it tomorrow. Weve baked some ’sort of’ Roman style pizza in that we used spelt flour for the base.

Recipe, makes two quite large pizzas:

for the base
1 kg. spelt flour
about 1 litre of warm water
1 sachet of easy bake yeast (I know, not terribly Roman!)
1 tsp. sugar
half a tsp. seasalt for the topping
about 100g of tomato puree
a couple of handfuls of fresh herbs, chopped (we used oregano and thyme)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 or 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Some water to mix Mix the yeast into the flour with the salt and sugar. Gradually add the warm water until you get a soft dough – it works best to mix this with your hands, messy but fun! Don’t knead for very long like you would do with wheat. Halve the mixture into two dough balls and spread out on warm baking sheets. Leave in a warm place while you prepare the topping (we left them sitting in the oven on a very low heat): Mix up your chopped herbs, olive oil, garlic and tomato puree with some water and spread this over the pizzas. We sprinkled some pumpkin seeds on too. Turn the oven up to about 200C (yes we just leave it in there while the oven heats up, very lazy not leaving it to rise) and bake for 20 – 30 minutes until cooked. Everyone agreed this was delicious – I thought making two pizzas would ensure left-overs for the next day but it was not to be

 We bought this activity book in Bath – Charlotte has really enjoyed it, especially the dot to dot and Gods and Goddesses. Has a lot of information in it – even includes maths with working our how much you can buy with your denarii earned as a Roman soldier!
 Buy UK or Buy US