making pizza in taiwan

wuhoo! it's wu family pizza :)

If anyone asks Lawrance what his favorite food to eat that Amanda makes is, he answers enthusiastically “pizza!”

Taiwanese people who hear this answer assume it would be a common answer since of course all Americans eat is pizza and hamburgers.  But, the looks on some of the American’s faces have been precious. Most assume he has misunderstood the question since it would seem very difficult to make pizza in Taiwan. Then once they realize he totally understood, and I do make pizza here, they want to know how.

Actually making pizza in Taiwan is quite easy. I get both my pizza sauce and crust at a “local” bakery supply store called Wang Lai; it is about a 45 minute ride from our home by moped. I’m sure other bakery supply stores probably also sell pizza sauce and crust–I know the “pineapple man store” in Kaohsiung does too. The small jar of sauce pictured below is our favorite and will cover about 10-12 small pizzas.

The pizza cheese (mozzarella) can be found at the bakery store too, and sometimes we are able to find it at our local grocery store as well. It’s not cheap, but frozen the cheese will keep awhile and this one bag will last us about 16 small pizzas.

products we use to make our pizza

In addition to the cheese, we top our pizzas with ground beef or pork that I have seasoned generously with Italian seasoning that we can get at Costco (thanks Larina!!) and Tony’s that I carry back from the States. We also typically top it with yellow and red peppers, onions, and for Lawrance’s pizza frozen corn (that I purchased at the bakery store too–just for his pizzas).

I then bake them two at a time at 160c for about 10 minutes on our nifty pizza pan that was wedding gift from Sarah and Kevin (thanks guys!!).

a sprinkle of cheese, then they are ready to be baked

Like the Americans who hear Lawrance’s answer, I had always assumed that making pizza (in Taiwan) would be hard. I guess if I had to make the crust and sauce from scratch that would totally up the difficulty factor making it a very special, rare treat. But, the way I do it right now takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish–that’s faster than ordering from Pizza Hut!

I know it is no culinary masterpiece, but I share this here because I am constantly searching for how to easily make things both Lawrance and I enjoy eating, and I thought others who live in Taiwan might be too.

"pizza without corn just isn't real pizza" --Lawrance