h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My son was asking me if it was possible to make a pizza entirely from scratch - ie growing all the stuff first. I told him it was...theoretically.

Perhaps it would be a sufficiently off the wall idea to try and grow pizza in a lasagne garden.

I imagine the biggest challenge would be fodder for the buffalo you'd need to make the mozzarella.

How would you grind the flour?

You could easily grow your own pizza ingredients if you used a potato base.

We haven't really thought it through, I'll admit - but I don't think there's a specific rule against us taking whatever grain we grow to a convenient miller. At least...not a rule that *we've* set and it's our game.

Give him a break, already! It's just something a wee boy asked from the back of the car.

Why couldn't you grind the wheat? It's not titanium we're talking about...

Well I did assume we could with a mortar and pestle and enough elbow grease.

And I'm certainly not assuming that we'd have to dig clay from our garden to build a pizza oven, ore so we can have knives...

Anyway, it's odd you should mention it - I embarked on a scheme to grow a pizza from scratch a few years ago.

That said, laziness took over and it just turned into growing a few tomatoes.

So you never even got round to buying a buffalo, then?

I really don't want to know where you're going to grow the yeast for that pizza dough...

I think a lot of people knew the building/housing/property market in Ireland was a bubble that would one day burst. I think that was common knowledge, actually. I think few if any people know how that the burst would coincide with a whole load of other problems.

TRiG.

There was a bubble market in real estate in a lot of countries, as far as I can tell. When bubbles pop, the results can be bad.

>>really don't want to know where you're going to grow the yeast for that pizza dough...

Yeast is easiest of all, it just arrives from the air.

Indeed. Leave a bowl of water and flour four three days and you'll find it has bubbles in it. Keep on feeding until you need it. Hold some back every time you bake.

A Scandiwegian friend told me that when trendy young Scandiwegians go on holiday, they check their yeast into a Sourdough Hotel so they'll get fed. Don't you just want to slap them?

There must be a simple way of automatically feeding a sourdough culture.

Maybe a pierced sack of flour suspended above it so that flour gently trickles in? And a container of water ditto. And to stir it, keep it in an electric ice-cream maker.

There! One of humankind's greatest problems sorted and it isn't even lunchtime yet. No yeasty problem is so great that it's beyond the application of technology.

You may bury mein the yeast, but I willrise.

I wonder if you could make your own Marmite? Now there's a challenge.

Mind you, you could just use recycled sump oil from your local garage.

I've never tasted marmite, so I wouldn't be able to tell if my manufacture of it had worked.

You can freeze a sourdough culture and then reactivate the night before you want to use it by giving it some more flour. No need for Sour Dough Hotel.

I've tried sourdough bread and it wasn't worth the effort.

Many years ago I bought a book of sourdough recipes, and dutifully set about trying each of the recipes, one by one. It was easier to make the stuff than dispose of it after it was made.