You want a pizza this?

As I've said before I'm not really a savoury baker. Dough scares me! However, with time on my hands during the holidays it allows me to try out some different recipes. We enjoy pizza in the Little Birdie household so I decided to try making a pizza from scratch for dinner.

I used a Lorraine Pascale recipe for the dough which you can find on the BBC website here. I was pleased with how it turned out. It wasn't as thin and crispy as a normal pizza but this was probably down to me not rolling it out thin enough. I've also read that a pizza stone helps create a more authentic pizza but sadly we don't own one so maybe I will have to investigate.

Ingredients

For the basic dough
250g strong white bread flour (plus extra for dusting)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fast-action dried yeast
125-145ml warm water (I found I needed a little more than this)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (plus extra for oiling)

For the pizza topping
Whatever you want! I used...
Passata (1/4-1/2 a box)
Tomato puree (1 tbsp)
Mozzarella (1 large ball)
Tomatoes
Pepper (1/4)
Chorizo
A sprinkling of Cheddar and Red Leicester cheese
A small bunch of basil leaves

Method
1) Mix the flour, salt and yeast together in a large bowl and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the water and oil together, then pour the liquid into the well of the flour mixture and mix to make a soft but not sticky dough.

Mix together the ingredients

Make a well

Mix together to form a soft dough 

2) Knead for 10 minutes by hand on a lightly floured work surface (this is a good work-out - my arms were aching after this!) or for five minutes in an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Bring the dough together to a smooth flat ball and place on a large, lightly floured baking tray (I forgot to do this - oops!)

Knead until the dough is smooth and form into a smooth flat ball 

3) Cover the pizza dough loosely with oiled clingfilm, making sure it is airtight. Leave in a warm but not hot place for 30-40 minutes (I left mine for a little longer - about 1 1/2 hours as it didn't rise very quickly).

Cover in oiled cling film and leave 

4) Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7.
5) Remove the clingfilm from the dough and roll out to a 30cm circle to knock some air out, then prick holes all over the dough with a fork. Spread over the tomato passata and puree, leaving a 2.5 cm border around the outside. Cover with your chosen toppings (don't go crazy - I used too much and found some of my cheese escaped!)

Roll out and prick holes with a fork

6) Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes (if using basil add towards the end of the cooking time - I added mine 2/3 minutes from the end).
7) Serve and enjoy!

Bagels...

I'm normally a 'sweet' baker. My husband likes to tease me that if I ever went on 'The Great British Bake Off' I would only bake cupcakes. For the bread week I would bake cupcake bread, for biscuit week cupcake biscuits and so on... Well, I was out to prove him wrong!

I have a subscription to Olive magazine (courtesy of Mr Tesco and his clubcard points). I'm not normally a big fan of their recipes as they normally involve lots of ingredients we never have. However, my eye was caught by a step-by-step bagel recipe in the February 2013 edition. Sadly I can't find the recipe online however there is a very similar one here...http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1088/bagels-for-brunch

One of the things that persuaded me to try it was that other than yeast all the ingredients needed were in our cupboard. They're pretty simple: olive oil, strong white bread flour, yeast, salt, warm water, golden caster sugar and light muscovado sugar.

The steps are pretty simple - you make a dough and then can either leave it to prove for a couple of hours in an oiled bowl in the warm or overnight in a fridge. I opted for the fridge option. This is what my dough looked like before it went in the fridge (I never realised kneading dough was such a workout!)

The following morning I was excited to find it hand indeed increased in size (hurray - I'm not a total failure!) I then had to separate it into 10 lumps which then needed shaping into balls...

The next bit is a little crazy - you have to boil them in a large pan of water which has bicarbonate of soda in it (it fizzes like mad!) for about a minute. They then go on an oiled baking sheet with an egg glaze and a sprinkling of your desired topping (I went for poppy and sesame seeds).

After about 15-18 minutes they should be golden brown and crispy.

I was pretty impressed with how they tasted and the texture. If I make them again I would try to make the holes bigger - the recipe suggests 3cm but it's tricky to get them to stay that size without it pinging back!

It's definitely made me think that I should give bread and savoury baking more of a try. In fact there's a recipe for potato and rosemary bread in this months Olive magazine that I'm already eyeing up!

Until my next baking adventure...
Dil :-)