Prosciutto Pizza

Having people round on a Friday and want something that looks like effort but really isn’t? This is the pizza to make. The dough needs an hour to prove, but that’s an hour you can spend tidying up, sorting drinks, or just having a cup of tea — the actual hands-on time is barely fifteen minutes either side of that wait.

You don’t need a pizza oven or even a pizza stone for this one. A domestic oven cranked up as high as it’ll go does the job in 10 to 12 minutes flat, which makes it a proper weeknight option as much as a weekend one. The trick that makes the biggest difference is timing the prosciutto: it goes on after baking, not before. Bake it with everything else and those thin slices turn leathery and salty in all the wrong ways; add it once the pizza’s out of the oven and it just softens slightly from the residual heat while staying properly tender.

The base itself is a straightforward water dough — no milk, no eggs — which keeps it light rather than stodgy, closer to what you’d get from a proper Neapolitan-style pizzeria than a thick-crust takeaway version. A scattering of hard cheese alongside the mozzarella brings a savoury edge that mozzarella alone doesn’t quite manage, so don’t skip it even if the quantity looks small on paper.

Make the dough in the morning, pop it in the fridge, and by the time your guests arrive you’ve got nothing left to do but shape, top and bake — the kind of recipe that looks like you’ve been at it all day when really you had time to sit down too.