Mulie made pizza!

Evening all!

I thought today I would update you all on my weekend and also bring you the news of the 'Earthly Messenger' statue and of course, the latest news of the vandalism it suffered in the early hours of yesterday morning.

This last weekend was also a Mulie weekend. Matthew had caught wind of the David Bowie statue being unveiled so he wanted to come and see it for himself. Neither of us are Bowie fans, but we just wanted to see what this £100,000 multi-media statue looked like in person. Anyway, more on Bowie later on.

We had quite a culinary weekend planned to include a Mulie pizza making sesh. We both love pizza (even though I don't like cheese) so we thought what better way to enjoy them than to cook them together. We had bought so many pizza's before and were always disappointed by at least one aspect of them, so a Mulie pizza should be a great compromise- we could make them exactly as we wanted, nothing can go wrong, right?


It all started on Sunday morning- early- with dough making. The recipe stated we needed to make the dough and then leave it to prove for 6 hours. Not exactly as speedy as a Domino's, but the long wait and the effort would make it taste much better, right? While we left the dough to prove we went to see the statue unveiling and look around town. More on that later, but first, pizza!

The next step was to get our nicely proved dough out and kneed it into submission until it starts to resemble a pizza base. Now this is where I fell at the first hurdle. Despite using the exact same ingredients and following the same method, mine ended up a lot drier and tougher to discipline than Matthew's- much to his delight. He then began tossing his dough in the air trying to replicate a scene from a Italian pizzeria kitchen, while I was stuck trying to punch my stubborn dough into shape- any fucking shape. Such a typical scene- Matthew the culinary genius (even if by accident) and me, the culinary klutz watching on with envy. The more I prodded my lazy dough, the more Matthew (and even I) laughed at our dramatically different outcomes. To try and desperately save my dry dough, I introduced it to a bit of moisture which seemed to do something encouraging at least. The next step in the method was to put your pizza base in the oven for 10 minutes before putting the toppings on. More hilarity ensued as Matthew's perfect pizza base laid on a tray next to my hap-hazard creation.

After 10 minutes it was time to get our toppings on! We had laid out everything like the toppings station at Domino's (we're very professional in our exploits, don't you know!) and soon got to work placing pepperoni and sprinkling cheese (on his pizza) and red onion like we were pizza artisan's. Once our pieces of art were decorated, it was time to put them in the oven for the final bake.

Mine and Matthew's first pizza attempt

Soon, the pizzas were done, and it was time for the taste test. Surprisingly, my pizza tasted a lot better than it looked and we both concluded that they turned out quite well. Ironically, Matthew ended up with a doughy pizza (how I like it) and my pizza turned out crispier (how he likes it). Our second pizzas were the real deal. We'd learnt our lessons from the first bake, so they looked a lot more professional. Of course, after we had one of our pizzas for dinner, we were way too full to eat the second (as delicious as it looked) so we thought we would save it.

Our second attempt

Mulie pizza making was a great experience even if I did balls it up slightly. You see, that's the thing, even if it goes wrong, you either miraculously save it like I managed to do by fluke alone, or you fail spectacularly and have a great laugh in the process. I would recommend making your own pizza's; you can make them your own and they even taste better than the real thing because you know how much effort you put in. We followed the BBC Good Food pizza dough recipe and added some semolina flour for added texture.

Now that you've read all about the Mulie pizza making extravaganza, it's time to move onto to the 'Earthly Messenger' statue. The statue was unveiled on Sunday after a 2-year crowd-funding journey sparked by music promoter David Stopps. Now before I go any further, I'll come out now and say that I don't see the necessity of a statue. Yes, he played here and debuted Ziggy Stardust in Aylesbury, but David Bowie wasn't the only influential person that wandered through the Market Square, so to spend that much money on a statue? The money could've been spent in a better way. Maybe set up or open a club dedicated to him and his memory perhaps? That would also serve the community better by nurturing new band talent such as Callow Saints, who played to the crowds on Sunday, and by offering somewhere new and interesting to go in Aylesbury. Rant over. 

Me and Matthew decided to leave the self-congratulating people to it and go back to get a better look at it later. The statue was sold to everyone as a multi-media extravaganza that played a song of Bowie's every hour on the hour. This however, turned out not to be true, even after the clocks going forward. No songs, no lights, no extravaganza. I will however say that however much I find the thing unnecessary, it is a good work of art. The likeness isn't far off (not like that car crash of a statue for Christiano Renaldo!) and clearly a lot of effort has gone into designing it. Well, for £100,000 I would bloody well hope so!

However, today we heard the news that the statue was vandalised over night with the words "feed the homeless first" and "RIP GB". Well, you've already read my opinion on the statue itself and it's fair to say the statue has faced criticism as well as praise, but there's no need for vandalism. The statue was not funded by the taxpayer, but through a crowd-fund, so while many will no doubt be of the opinion that it's a waste of money- it's not a waste of your money. It's someone else's money. By vandalising the statue and the public path, the culprit has indeed created a masterpiece in nothing but irony. Whose money do they think goes into cleaning the streets? Yes, the taxpayer. And who pays to help the council help the homeless? The taxpayer. I really do despair at some people. Is it pure ignorance? Is it self- importance that society seems to have in abundance nowadays? Who knows? All we know is that a massive clean up is now under way. While organisers, fund-raisers and David Bowie fans alike wanted this statue to put Aylesbury on the map, I'm not sure this is quite the way they intended.

Thanks to the CCTV camera with amazing night vision that was put opposite the statue, the culprit was caught red handed.

That's all for now. I'm not sure whether I'll be back before I go away to London for another Mulie adventure but fear not as I will update you all on our Mulie London adventures when I get back.