Purple Sprouting Broccoli Pizza

Make a classic your own

Pizza night has long been a family favourite, from the early days of toddlers making faces with pepper, mushrooms and ham to experimenting with stuffed crust or calzone in the BBQ. The evolution of pizza has gone through every connotation, style and flavour over the years.

Now we find the family table thinning, we can indulge our own tastes. Saturday pizza has become a Veg Box topping lucky dip, and Spring has so much to offer.

Blue cheese and Broccoli soup is a winner so why not on a pizza? A few sliced red onions, and a final flourish of wild garlic pesto and a blob of mayonnaise to dip the crust… perfection. 


Makes 2 9” thin crust Pizza
Preparation time: 1 hour 30 minutes (room temp depending)
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Dough Ingredients:
450g high protein bakers flour
50g fine semolina
1 sachet of instant yeast or equivalent
385g warm water
1 tbs rapeseed oil
1 tsp sea salt flakes

Pizza sauce Ingredients:
1 onion
4 garlic cloves
1 pinch chilli flakes
Rapeseed oil
60g tomato puree
1 jar tomato passata
1 tbs dried herbs such as marjoram
Sea salt flakes
1 tsp demerara sugar

Preheat the oven to 240°C

1. Begin with the dough to allow time to rest and rise. Mix the flour and semolina the add enough water to bring to a soft sticky dough. Some yeast needs to be sponged in water while others added to the dry ingredients. Follow the instructions on your packet.  

2. Once the dough is beginning to come together, turn out onto a work surface and begin to work. After a few minutes add the oil and salt, then continue working until the dough becomes non-stick, smooth and shiny. Or let an electric mixer do the hard work for you.

3. Shape and stretch into a ball land leave covered somewhere warm to double in size. Put a heavy baking tray or stone in the oven to heat up.

4. For the sauce, begin by heating a generous puddle of oil in a saucepan over a medium heat. Slice the garlic and fry to a light golden brown, then add the chilli flakes and onion. Continue to fry until the onion begins to brown around the edges, then add the tomato puree. Continue to fry until the puree deepens in colour. Add the passata, herbs, salt and sugar. Turn the heat right down and leave to simmer and reduce to a thick consistency.

5. After about 40 minutes, remove the sauce from the heat, puree and it’s ready to use. 

6. The dough should be ready around now, so turn out onto a lightly floured worktop, divide into two and shape into balls by pulling the sides into the middle, give the dough a little turn, pull the sides in and continue this until you have a pleasant round shape. Turn the dough over and, starting from the middle, flatten and stretch using your fingers. Once you have a decent disc, stretch and tease the dough into a pizza shape.

7. Take the preheated sheet or stone out of the oven, put the pizza base directly onto the stone and give it some encouragement into a round shape. Add enough sauce to lightly coat the base leaving a thumbs width boarder and ad your favourite toppings. In this case PSB and sliced red onion. No cheese just yet.

8. Bake in the preheated oven for 8 minutes, remove from the oven, add the cheese and continue to bake until the cheese is molten and bubbling. 


Serve with a wild garlic mayonnaise to dip the crusts. 

Chef Notes:
1. The dough will be wetter than expected at the start, but the higher the hydration the chewier, more bubbly and lighter the finished pizza base will be. 
2. For big bits of PSB, blanch briefly in boiling water first, drain well then add to the pizza.
3. If you have a pizza oven then there is no need to wait before adding the cheese. These are hot enough to cook the base from below. 

Robin Popham
Chef at ‘Create Terroir’ and Sandy Lane Farm veg box customer