Foraged pizza

There's food everywhere if you know where to look for it. This pizza utilises whatever edible greens you might have growing on your nature strip, in your backyard, or around your nearest park, and pairs them with a delicious sourdough base made by capturing the wild yeasts in the air around you. If the season's right, you can incorporate your favourite foraged, wild mushrooms too! Just make sure your first few foraging trips are with someone who knows what they're looking for, and never eat something you can't easily identify.

Credit: Adam Liaw

• serves

  4

• prep

  45 minutes

• cook

  15 minutes

• difficulty

  Mid

Ingredients

• 70 g foraged wild greens (see note)
• 125 ml (½ cup) very good extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
• sea salt, to season
• 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 200 g wild mushrooms (saffron milk caps, slippery jacks, wood blewit), optional
• 2 tsp white wine vinegar
• 500 ml (2 cups) crème fraiche
• 2 tsp ground mountain pepper berry (or ground black pepper)
• 20 g foraged wild alliums (angled onion or wild garlic), optional

Dough

• 100 g ready–to-use sourdough starter (fed the day before use and bubbling well)
• 10 g salt
• 375 g lukewarm water
• 500 g (2⅓ cups) strong (00) flour

To serve: small leaves of foraged wild greens and foraged wild edible flowers (dandelion, violets, nasturtium, etc.)

Resting time: 2-3 days

Instructions

1. For the dough, combine the sourdough starter, salt and water in a bowl, then add the flour and mix well until combined (do not knead). Cover the bowl with a kitchen cloth and stand for 30 minutes. Scoop up half the dough from the base and fold it over the top of itself, then repeat every half hour with a different side of the dough, for 4 hours. Cover and stand at room temperature overnight or until doubled in size.
2. Cut the dough into 4 pieces and shape each one gently into a ball, pulling any scrappy side edges underneath the ball until the top is smooth and round. Wrap each ball individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 - 3 days to develop flavour and chew. Remove from the refrigerator 1 hour before using.
3. To prepare the foraged greens, remove the leaves from stems and stalks where necessary, wearing rubber gloves if handling stinging nettles. Discard the stalks and submerge the leaves in a bowl of water to remove any dirt or impurities. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a rapid boil. Add the washed greens and cook, stirring for 30 - 60 seconds, then drain and place in a bowl of iced water. Stand for 30 seconds, then drain again and squeeze well with your hands (the nettles will now be safe to touch), extracting as much liquid as possible.
4. Roughly chop the greens and place in a food processor with the extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp salt and half the garlic. Blitz until well chopped, then set aside.
5. To prepare the mushrooms if using, submerge each one quickly in a bowl of water with a splash of white wine vinegar (this will keep the mushrooms from going slimy when cooked). Remove from the water and thickly slice. Heat a good drizzle of oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and the remaining garlic and cook until the mushrooms have released all their liquid and most of the liquid has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Preheat the oven and a steel pizza tray or pizza stone to the hottest possible setting.
7. Gently stretch out the pizza dough, letting gravity pull it down slowly as you turn it in your hands, then lay it on a sheet of baking paper roughly the same size as the pizza tray or stone. Spread with crème fraiche, leaving a 2 cm border around the outside of the dough. Dot with spoonfuls of the wild green puree, spreading it gently across the crème fraiche with the back of a spoon. If using, lay the sliced mushrooms evenly over the pizza. Sprinkle with ground pepper berry and the sliced wild alliums if using. You could also add torn pieces of buffalo mozzarella at this point).
8. Slide the baking paper and pizza onto the pizza tray or stone, working quickly to minimise heat loss in the oven and bake for 5 - 8 minutes or until the crust is blistered and darkened. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with salt flakes, then scatter over the foraged leaves and flowers, then slice and serve. Repeat for the remaining three pizzas.

Note:

•For the foraged wild greens, try stinging nettle, nasturtium, mallow, wild lettuce, dandelion leaves, amaranth, purslane, shepherd's purse, wild fennel, chickweed, sow thistle, or any other edible variety available near you.

Photography by Adam Liaw.

Want more from The Cook Up?

• Stream free here at SBS On Demand.

• Get the show recipes, articles and more here.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.