Stratford students celebrate pizza as they cook their favourite food at school

Many adults believe school is much more fun today than it was when they were young.

Most of them will be going green with envy when they hear that pupils at a primary school had the chance to tuck into tasty pizza they prepared themselves as part of a project promoting healthy lifestyles.

The Origins Day at Maryland Primary School, was led by teacher Anastasia Boreham and allowed the children to celebrate one of their favourite foods. The school’s headteacher, Lorna Jackson, wanted the children to focus on learning much more about where the food they take for granted comes from.

Anastasia Boreham, had brought her father, Stephen Boreham to help as he is an experienced cook and he gave the children a demonstration and visited every class during the day to offer support.

He had baked some delicious bread which children were asked to taste test against a piece of supermarket sliced white. Most children preferred Stephen’s bread, even though his bread was brown and most youngsters profess they don’t like brown bread.

Every child throughout the school researched all the pizza ingredients (flour, yeast, olive oil, sugar, salt, tomato, mozzarella, peppers, olives, mushrooms and pineapple), using maps and the internet.

Lorraine Cooper, deputy head at the Stratford school, said: “After that they donned their aprons and got stuck into making, kneading and proving their dough, rolling it out and adding the toppings. Every oven in the kitchen was stacked with baking pizzas – the school smelled wonderful!

“The best part, of course, was the eating. There wasn’t a scrap left over. When I asked some classes whether they’d make pizza from scratch at home, most hands shot up into the air.”