I make homemade pizza a lot, with a variety of toppings, but one that always makes an impression is the egg topping on Pizza Florentine. It looks impressive and tastes great too. I like it for lunch, but I think it would be great for brunch too.

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Dough

300g strong organic flour

½ tsp fast action yeast

2 tbsp olive oil

170ml water

½ tsp salt

Topping

4 tbsp of pasata

2 eggs

a handful of spinach

6 cherry tomatoes

1 mozzarella ball

1 tbsp of dried oregano or a sprig of fresh

3 tbsp homemade pesto  Get that recipe here

3 or 4 basil leaves

salt and pepper to taste

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If you have a bread machine, whack the ingredients in that, and follow your manufacturers guidelines for making dough.

If you are making it by hand, here’s how:

Tip the flour, salt and yeast into a large bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour the water and oil into the well and in a circular motion start to gather the flour from the sides of the well. Keep going until all the flour is incorporated.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and kneed for 5-10 min. Place back into the bowl, cover and leave to rise for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 220 °c /fan 200 °c. Remove the dough from the bread machine or bowl and lightly kneed again. Divide the dough into two equal balls and roll out using a rolling pin. I go rustic on the shape, but feel free to make it perfectly circular if you want! Transfer the pizza bases onto two baking trays, or a pizza stone.

Next spread out 2 tbsp of pasata onto each of the bases, leaving a 1 cm edge free. Scatter the spinach leaves, baby tomatoes and the torn mozzarella on the pizzas then add a few spoonfuls of pesto on top. Sprinkle with a little oregano, basil leaves and black pepper and bake in the oven for 10-12 min, then quickly crack an egg in the middle of the pizza and bake for a further 3 min until the white just sets, but the yolk remains runny.

I bake the pizzas one at a time, to ensure a good distribution of heat.

Serve with a good salad. Maybe this one?