English primary school cookery lessons include making “pizza” out of a scone base, a tomato sauce consisting entirely of concentrated tomato puree (the stuff that comes in a toothpaste tube and is incredibly bitter), and usually sharp english cheddar, which tends to separate and go quite oily.
I did this in the early 90s. My sister worked for the local independent pizza delivery company at the time and dominos was a thing even in smalltown england by then. I was in a major sulk, but my sister just said: “get a pack of instant yeast out of the cupboard and follow the instructions on the back, i’ll be back in 20 minutes” and returned with mozarella and fresh herbs from the local safeway. A tin of tomatoes sorted most of the sauce. And then she showed off by showing me how to cook an egg on a pizza. The internet has improved my tomato sauce.
A few years ago when my partner’s eldest was subjected to the same ritual of humiliation, she declared “I don’t know what this is, but it’s not pizza, even you know how to make pizza so it can’t be that hard. Show me.” And i passed down the secret family recipe from the back of an instant yeast packet. I can’t remember whether it was that time or a few weeks later we went to the co-op and tried a handful of different cheeses to see what melted nicely.
That said, supermarket pizzas tend to be made on some kind of scone base and i think quite a few frozen ones are here, but even those are fluffier than the scone based inedible pizza substitute that appears to have made the national curriculum and never been removed despite it not being the 70s any more.
