Peter Reinhart said that if you want to create a new pizza, base it on food that you already like in another context (like his spaghetti & meatball pizza).
Last week we went to London to see the great afrobeat band Antibalas. Had to stay overnight so took the opportunity to have lunch in Moro, a restaurant that would bankrupt us if we lived any closed than North Wales. Down the road from Moro on Exmouth Market we found a little Spanish food shop full of goodies and one thing we came home with was a pack of sliced chorizo. I figured this could be the basis of a fake Spanish pizza.
A lot of years ago Dan Lepard asked me what I thought was the most important element for good flavour in bread. Was it the starter, the length of fermentation or the quality of the wheat? It was obviously a rhetorical question given that he knew a lot more about baking than I do. The wheat he said, and I hastily agreed with him.
In the last couple of years I have started to understand this better and particularly since I started milling my own grain. Combine this with some of the pizza doughs I have been experimenting with and things start to get interesting.
I only recently tried Marc Vetri’s Mixed Wheat Roman Style dough, a mix of Wholemeal Wheat, Rye and Spelt, and was pretty knocked out with it. So this was the basis for the pizza.
Insomnia gives you time to think. And I gradually thought, if we are starting with chorizo, why not go with tapas dishes? And if we are going with Peter Rheinhart, why not something as crazy as Patatas Bravas? And my favourite version is Penelope Casas.
She has the potatoes oven fried. Her tomato sauce has onion, garlic, tomatoes, parsley, white wine, water, tomato puree, dried red chile, a little sugar, a splash of tabasco. I swapped the chile for red pepper flakes and added smoked paprika.
So we had a thin layer of brava sauce, a layer of chorizo, the potatoes dotted across the surface topped with more sauce, triangles of piquilo chiles, a few splodges of onion confit left over from the day before. No cheese (no pinapple).
When it came out of the oven the spuds were annointed with garlic mayo and the whole served with a dish of crumbled morcilla.
I can honestly say I have never had a better pizza. The toppings were comprehensive but not over the top. But the crust …
Why would you ever use white flour in a pizza?
The PArtisan Baker 
That’s a great idea never thought of that before but I will definitely try it after the holiday. Maybe try it with leftover BBQ.
Why not …?