Big Trev

I’ve had a play around with this in the past - one thing I’ve tried is sort of rolling it out and sprinkling cheese and whatever you’ve got (olives, basil, pesto, pasta sauce) and then rolling it up like a swiss roll and cooking.

Really easy, a lot of fun, and I’ve not failed with this recipe yet!

From here.

ingredients
• 1kg/just over 2lb strong bread flour
• 625ml/just over 1 pint tepid water
• 30g/1oz fresh yeast or 3 x 7g/¼oz sachets dried yeast
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
extra flour for dusting

Stage 1: making a well
Pile the flour on to a clean surface and make a large well in the centre. Pour half your water into the well, then add your yeast, sugar and salt and stir with a fork.

Stage 2: getting it together
Slowly, but confidently, bring in the flour from the inside of the well. (You don’t want to break the walls of the well, or the water will go everywhere.) Continue to bring the flour in to the centre until you get a stodgy, porridgey consistency – then add the remaining water. Continue to mix until it’s stodgy again, then you can be more aggressive, bringing in all the flour, making the mix less sticky. Flour your hands and pat and push the dough together with all the remaining flour. (Certain flours need a little more or less water, so feel free to adjust.)

Stage 3: kneading!
This is where you get stuck in. With a bit of elbow grease, simply push, fold, slap and roll the dough around, over and over, for 4 or 5 minutes until you have a silky and elastic dough.

Stage 4: first prove
Flour the top of your dough. Put it in a bowl, cover with clingfilm, and allow it to prove for about half an hour until doubled in size – ideally in a warm, moist, draught-free place. This will improve the flavour and texture of your dough and it’s always exciting to know that the old yeast has kicked into action.

Stage 5: second prove, flavouring and shaping
Once the dough has doubled in size, knock the air out for 30 seconds by bashing it and squashing it. You can now shape it or flavour it as required – folded, filled, tray-baked, whatever – and leave it to prove for a second time for 30 minutes to an hour until it has doubled in size once more. This is the most important part, as the second prove will give it the air that finally ends up being cooked into your bread, giving you the really light, soft texture that we all love in fresh bread. So remember – don’t fiddle with it, just let it do its thing.

Stage 6: cooking your bread
Very gently place your bread dough on to a flour-dusted baking tray and into a preheated oven. Don’t slam the door or you’ll lose the air that you need. Bake according to the time and temperature given with your chosen recipe. You can tell if it’s cooked by tapping its bottom – if it sounds hollow it’s done, if it doesn’t then pop it back in for a little longer. Once cooked, place on a rack and allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes – fandabidozi. Feel free to freeze any leftover bread.

One thing I’ll admit that I haven’t got my head around is what constitutes “Strong” flour. I generally just use whatever - I’ve used the Coles generic stuff in the past without problems. Even if it’s not “perfect” bread, there’s nothing like hot bread straight out of the oven!

Regular readers (both of you) may have noticed that I’ve added a new category for Food on here.

Like a lot of things I put up here to share with the world, it’s stuff which I’m basically recording for my own benefit so I don’t forget! One of my bad habits is that when I go to cook something I haven’t cooked before, I tend to find a recipe on the internets, cook it, and if it was good, by the time I want to do it again I’ve forgotten the recipe and where I got it from. So I’ll start putting em up here.

So, for today, we have a home-made pizza dough recipe!
This came from here, but in case they take it down, the recipe is below. This is a Jamie Oliver recipe - I generally like his stuff, because he tends to fuck around less than what a lot of the “celebrity” chefs do, who seem to enjoy spending 2 hours and a bunch of ingredients to make 100ml of some fancy sauce.

Directions

This is a fantastic, reliable, everyday pizza dough, which can also be used to make bread. It’s best made with Italian Tipo “00″ flour, which is finer ground than normal flour, and it will give your dough an incredible super-smooth texture. Look for it in Italian markets and good supermarkets. If using white bread flour instead, make sure it’s a strong one that’s high in gluten, as this will transform into a lovely, elastic dough, which is what you want. Mix in some semolina flour for a bit of color and flavor if you like.
Ingredients

* 7 cups strong white bread flour or Tipo “00″ flour or 5 cups strong white bread flour or Tipo “00″ flour, plus 2 cups finely ground semolina flour
* 1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
* 2 (1/4-ounce) packets active dried yeast
* 1 tablespoon raw sugar
* 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

Sift the flours and salt onto a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a large measuring cup, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.

Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands - this is called punching down the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straightaway, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas - this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas.

Timing-wise, it’s a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 to 20 minutes before you want to cook them. Don’t roll them out and leave them hanging around for a few hours, though - if you are working in advance like this it’s better to leave your dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there’s 1 less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into rough circles, about 1/4-inch thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted aluminum foil. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with plastic wrap, and pop them into the refrigerator.

I used a 1kg bag of normal, garden variety plain flour (White Wings). And since we’re a bit short of bench space here, I started the dough in a big bowl with all the flour in it, and made a well, tipped the mixture in and started mixing in the bowl before tipping onto the bench. I froze half the dough, and the half I used made one big pizza and 2 littlies.

I’ve also made Jamie’s Basic Bread recipe a few times in the past, so I’ll have to give that a go again now that I’ve bought some yeast.