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I’ve always loved a good pizza! Always. I think. As far as I can remember anyway. Gourmet pizzas hit the spot, are easy to eat and can combine all of my favourite food groups, bread, meat, mushrooms and cheese! Of course, there is the odd occasion (read: hangover), where even the lesser fast food style pizza may be consumed. But best of the bunch is still the good ol’ home made, dough and all, pizza!
If you’re not on the eastern seaboard of Australia you may not be aware that it has been hot. Damn hot. Lately. So, how best to utilise the heat in the air that just won’t move? By activating yeast, that’s how! Hence my misadventures in homemade pizza. That and the fact that it would take at least an hour to rise, the time remaining in Mister Emmet’s journey home from a long day in he city watching films and writing subsequent reviews. I believe the man has found his dream job – unfortunately, it’s an internship and unpaid – and to come home to pizza, well, icing on the cake, just saying!
Basic Pizza Dough
1 1/2 cup warm water
2-2 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast
3 1/2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour + some extra along the way
2 tablespoons olive oil + a little extra
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon caster sugar
Toppings
Tomato paste or finely chopped can tomatoes
Anything you fancy really! I used:
Sliced mushrooms
Sliced leftover barbecue chicken breast
Sliced pepperoni
Lotsa cheese!
Dry Italian herbs
First things first, place the warm water into your bowl and sprinkle the yeast over the top. Leave this to sit for around 5 minutes while the yeast dissolves. After 5 minutes give it a stir. It’ll look like a bit of a cloudy mess, but that’s about right. Mix in the flour, salt, sugar and olive oil until just mixed. I used a wooden spoon as this doesn’t take too long, but you could use the electric mixer’s paddle attachment on low.
Because I’m in love with the Kitchen Aid, I attached the dough hook and using a medium speed kneaded the dough for around 10 minutes. During this time you’ll be able to see whether you’ve added enough flour. If the dough looks a little too sticky and is not easily forming a ball slowly add a little extra flour, say at a tablespoon at a time. Alternatively, if you don’t have a heavy duty mixer, flour those fingers and place your dough mix on a floured board. Same process here really, knead until it’s the right consistency and forming a ball, again, around 10 mins of smacking it around.
If you haven’t already, shape the dough into a rough ball and cover it with a light layer of olive oil. The best way to do this is drizzle the oil onto your hands and give the dough a rub. Then place it back into the mixing bowl and cover with cling wrap. Leave the bowl in a warm place for around an hour (or longer if you have the time), so the yeast can do its magic and rise!
At this stage you might want to prepare your toppings, chop your mushrooms and grate your cheese.
If you have a pizza stone, great, if not, use a flat tray and place it in the oven at about 200c to warm up for about ten minutes before you’re ready to place the pizza in.
Take your dough out of the bowl, it will have doubled in size and be nice and airy by now. Divide the mix in two, you can save one for later, or use them both to make a nice big pizza like mine! Roll the dough with your hands on a floured board. You can use a rolling pin too but it’s fun to get your hands ‘dirty’ (which of course they’re not, as you will have washed them prior to all of this). Flatten any thicker bits, but the overall thickness is personal preference – thin and crispy or a little bit bready?
When you’re happy with the thickness and size of your pizza, rub a light drizzle of olive oil over the surface – this will (hopefully) prevent your base from going soggy as the juices from your toppings sink in. Next, add your tomato base followed by cheese and toppings…and maybe a little more cheese. Chuck on a sprinkle of Italian herbs, or even better some fresh ones if you’ve them handy and into the oven it goes!
It should only take around 10-20 minutes in the oven, of course, this does depend on your oven so keep an eye on it so as not to burn the edges or have a soggy middle. Lets face it, nobody likes a soggy middle. And, if for whatever reason your husband’s train is delayed, don’t worry, you can leave the pizza in the oven to keep warm. Just turn off the heat and leave the fan on, this will push the residual heat around the oven without overcooking, or turn the oven off completely and leave the door ajar. Of course, you don’t want to be leaving it in there too long, or else the neighbours will knock your door down as the smell wafts around the neighbourhood!
Last but not least, slice and enjoy!
Yesterday, in an effort to avoid the disappointment of election counts, I took to the kitchen to bake up a storm! Nagymama was otherwise indisposed – but hopefully next week I’ll have a nice Hungarian dessert recipe for you – so I thought I’d make something from my newly inherited Irish heritage! In honour of my husband, and because we all know a wife’s place is in the kitchen (tongue firmly in cheek there), I thought I’d try my hand at traditional Irish soda bread! Which, as it would turn out, is excessively simple to make, and is really a not too distant relative of Australian damper. Had I thought to try it earlier, I may have saved a few quid while we were in Ireland. All it really takes is a little bit of time. Anyway, here’s the recipe. All I would say is that next time I’m going to use wheat flour rather than the more refined stuff. I prefer the slightly nutty flavour.
Irish Soda Bread
4 cups plain flour
2 tsp bicarb soda
1 tsp salt
60g butter
2 cups buttermilk (you might need slightly more but check the consistency as you go)
First things first, preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius and line a baking tray. Sift the flour, bicarb and salt into a mixing bowl. Using your fingers rub in cubes of room temperature butter until you get a crumby consistency. Mix in the butter milk with a wooden spoon to start, though you’ll need to get your hands in to bring the dough together. Tip the dough onto a floured surface and work it a little before forming into a round. Place it onto the baking tray and cut a cross into the top.
Baking will take between 35 mins and an hour to cook, depending on your oven. Mine took about 50 mins. My best advice here is to keep an eye on your bread beyond the 35 min mark. It will go nicely brown on the outside but you need to be sure that it won’t be raw in the middle.
I love soda bread with butter and cheese, or with lemon butter. The great thing is that there’s no sugar in it, so you can go savory or sweet no problem! Bain taitneamh as do bhéil!
Saved from the brink of disaster! First the chocolate mix looked WAY too thick. Then the cream cheese separated as I was mixing it (don’t over mix, I barely touched the damn thing and it split!), so I had to do it again, only for the same thing to happen. Hmmmm. Anyway, Mister Emmet reckons they’re not bad, for a first try that is! The problem is I’m buggered if I know what I did wrong as I followed the recipe precisely! They also ended up a bit squishy in the middle, but given there’s no raw egg in there I figure the consumers can deal with that. Interestingly, someone over here had similar issues to me. Although I was okay with the mixing of the dry ingredients (thank you deep bowled KitchenAid).
So anyway, if you’d like to attempt these, they come from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and they’re actually called black bottom cupcakes, but given there’s a suburb called Blackbutt just down the road I’ve named these in its honour. I didn’t add the chocolate buttons cos I thought that was just a little bit ott on this occasion. Similarly I left out the cream cheese frosting (but mostly because I had to double back and do the cream cheese mix again)!
As some of you may be aware, I have a penchant for baking cupcakes. Well, on Saturday I experienced cupcake heaven! It only took me my fifth (I think) visit to London to actually make it to the Hummingbird Bakery on Portobello Road, Notting Hill, but boy was it worth it! I didn’t have a lot of time in London this time around so bought a red velvet cupcake to eat on the fly. I carried the box with me for about 20 minutes before the temptation became too much and I dived into the little take home box. Heaven, I tell you, heaven! Soft, sponge cake covered in light fluffy cream cheese frosting! It comes in regular cake size too, although it felt a little early in the morning for me to be indulging quite that much…next time!
I will definitely be getting their cook book for home, and highly recommend you stop by one of their locations on your next trip to London! Yum!
Image borrowed from Tamarind and Thyme because my cupcake didn’t last long enough for a photograph!
Whatever to do with a bunch of overripe bananas? Bake, of course!
Initially I set out to bake a full banana cake, but, to my dismay, we don’t have a loaf tin in the house. No bother, back to the old faithful cupcake/muffin tin!
You will need:
- 2 lightly beaten eggs
- 2 cups sifted self-raising flour
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 1/4 cup milk
- 60g softened butter
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 3 ripe and mashed bananas
First things first, preheat the oven to about 180 degrees and line the baking tray with cupcake cases. Add the lemon juice to the milk and give it a stir. Leave the milk mixture to the side while you mash the bananas with a fork in a separate mixing bowl. In the mashed banana bowl add all of the remaining ingredients, then finally add the milk mixture. Mix gently until combined – I like to use a wooden spoon but you may prefer to use an electric mixer on low speed. When combined beat the mixture for a couple of minutes or until the colour of the batter lightens slightly. Spoon into cupcake cases and place in the oven for 12-15 minutes. Cakes are ready when a toothpick comes out clean. This recipe should make around 18 medium cupcakes.
Here I’ve sprinkled with icing sugar in place of any icing, but these cakes are great with a lemon cream cheese frosting, for which you will need:
- 125g pack of cream cheese
- 1 1/2 cup sifted icing sugar
- 2 teaspoons lemon zest
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
Beat all ingredients together until combined, smooth and spreadable. Easy!
