Pizza snails

s’s birthday wish was to have his class from børnehave over to play. They do this sometimes for birthdays - the whole room of kids goes to the birthday boy/girl’s house for a few hours in the morning during børnehave time, with a pedagog or two. But we haven’t tried it before… 

Apparently pizza snails (pizza snegle) are required for such gatherings. Like overnight bread rolls, these seem to be something every Danish mum can whip up with her eyes closed.

I asked two different Danish mums about how to make pizza snegle, and both directed me to the same recipe, this one. So that seemed like a done deal. 

(makes about 30 medium snails - including some slightly small/awkward end ones - about 20 acceptably similar ones)

For the dough:

50 g fresh yeast

200 ml milk

150 ml plain yoghurt 

2 eggs 

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp honey

100 ml olive oil

250 g / 9 oz wholewheat flour

400 g / 14 1/2 oz plain flour

 

For the tomato sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 400 g tin tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato purée

2 tsp dried oregano

Salt+pepper

 

To finish:

125 g (one pack) fresh mozzarella, finely chopped

1 egg, lightly beaten - for brushing

 

Make the dough:

Mix yeast in a large bowl with the milk. Add oil, yoghurt, honey, egg, salt and wholewheat flour and mix well together.

 

Add plain flour a little at a time until the dough is nice and flexible (it was a bit sticky). Put in a warm place to rise, with a tea towel over it, for about an hour or until doubled in size.

 

Make the tomato sauce:

Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Add tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer c 20 min until thick. Let cool, and keep in fridge until needed, esp if making in advance.

 

Assembly:

Roll out half the dough on a floured surface until c 1/2 cm thick rectangle/square. Spread half the tomato sauce out evenly on top, except c. 4 cm from one end. Sprinkle with half the cheese. Roll into a long roll and cut snails about 2 cm thick with a sharp knife. Put on baking sheets lined with baking paper, with a few cm between them at least, and make round and neat with your hands. Repeat with the other half of the ingredients. Let rise on the sheets for 30 min. Brush with beaten egg. Bake 16-18 min at 180C, until golden brown.

 

They came out well and looked legit. They didn't go down all that well with the kids (they preferred melon, salty popcorn and coconut water), but there were no major complaints so think I got them about right.

Potato pizza

We'd tried a few approaches to potato pizza, but they'd never been quite like the real thing. I think my recent pizza experiments with thinly sliced apples/mushrooms made me think of potato pizza, so I read a bit and gave it another go. It came out brilliant.

1 batch pre-made pizza dough
some medium-sized potatoes
salt
olive oil
rosemary (fresh or dried)
black pepper

Wash the potatoes but leave the skin on. Slice them as thin as you can with a peeler or sharp knife (or mandoline, if you have one) - try to judge the right amount of potato for the amount of pizza you want to make - if in doubt, err on the side of too much. Mix some salt in a medium bowl with some water, stir until dissolved, then add the potato slices. Set aside - for at least a couple of hours, or longer - will be ok in the fridge for up to a couple of days.

When ready to make pizza, drain the potato slices, rinse and pat dry with kitchen roll or a tea towel. Put in a bowl with a good slosh of olive oil, some fresh-ground pepper, and some fresh or dried rosemary, and mix well. Set aside, pre-heat the oven to 220C and roll out the pizza dough.

Arrange the potato slices over the pizza base, letting them overlap and spreading them right out to the edges. Sprinkle any remaining olive oil / rosemary mixture over the top. Put in the oven and bake for c 20 min, until the potatoes are lightly browned and crispy in places.

If you have too much sliced potato, put them in a baking tin a few layers deep with a little cheese on top and bake together with the pizza - makes a tasty extra snack.

Blue+white pizza with apple, walnuts and rosemary

When the fridge gets emptier, my cooking often gets better and more creative... The other day saw the highly serendipitous meeting of the last  tub of cream cheese I didn’t use for sage’s birthday cake with rosemary and apple from our veg bag and a handful of the last of our 2018 walnut harvest... and some gorgonzola for good measure... It was rather a successful experiment!

(makes 2 pizzas)

1 quantity pizza dough (must be made in advance)
1 tub cream cheese
c 1/2 cup diced gorgonzola
1 large apple (Belle de Boskoop), cored and thinly sliced
handful of walnuts
c 1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

Roll out half the dough, using some flour, and transfer to a baking sheet. Repeat with the other half. Prepare a white sauce by mashing the gorgonzola together with the cream cheese, and then spread it evenly over the two bases. Arrange the apple slices across the pizza bases, then sprinkle with walnut pieces and chopped rosemary. Bake for 20-25 min until done, take out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes before eating.


We made this twice, and the second time I did a little variation, using thinly sliced superfresh chestnut mushrooms instead of apple, and that was really good too. And then we started speculating about all sorts of other fruits and veggies that would be good in this combo instead of apple - figs? thin potato slices? etc...

Exciting pizza

S has a different approach to the kitchen than me. I tend to make different things all the time (as evidenced here), and get bored if I make the same thing too many times. He finds things he likes and makes them again and again until he reaches perfection. Like pasta. Or pretzels: he reaches a level of perfect replication in pretzel shapes that I have never achieved with anything. The latest thing to gain his attention is pizza. Since I discovered the speedy dough trick, we have developed a system: I make the dough and leave it in the fridge, then anytime he wants he can make pizza (and then I can eat it)!

Since we got back from Italy he's been getting awesomely adventurous. One success was white pizza with mozzarella and truffle paste, inspired by pizza we had in Rome and truffles we brought back in a jar. Another, which I guess was more inspired by Otto's in Boston, is pizza with spicy tomato sauce, white beans and potato. I cannot fully express just how well beans work on pizza: they get a little bit crispy on the outside: a bit of a falafel vibe? Very good! Both beans and potato are best cooked before putting on pizza to simplify matters.

Black pizza: balsamic reduction, date, walnut, fennel and goat cheese

I had forgotten how good this combination is. It is inspired by a pizza we ate by the waterfront in San Francisco once upon a time. We loved the combination of sweet and strong flavours. Then S suggested it when we were making pizza on a Sauna Wednesday in Norwich, and M helped us make the balsamic reduction that first time. S got really excited about pizza recently, because we are back on the dairy since moving to DK, and because our high-speed pizza dough has been especially good since we got here - perhaps the fresh yeast?

(makes 2 medium-small thin-crust pizzas)

1 cup balsamic vinegar
1-2 tbsp sugar
1/2-2/3 batch of high speed bread dough (must be made in advance)
flour for rolling
cornmeal, semolina or grahamsmel for the baking sheet
6 dates, stoned and roughly chopped
10 walnut halves, broken into pieces
1 smallish bulb of fennel, thinly sliced (or onion)
about 50 g of goat cheese (or mild creamy blue cheese eg gorgonzola), roughly chopped

Heat the oven to 220C. Put the balsamic vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan and heat at a high heat until it is just starting to thicken. Take off the heat. Separate the dough into two balls, and roll each out to about 3 mm thick. Sprinkle two baking sheets with cornmeal and transfer the pizza bases to them. Spread the balsamic reduction over the pizza bases. Sprinkle the dates, walnuts, fennel and goat cheese generously over the top. Put in the oven and bake for about 20 min, until starting to brown. Take out and let cool for five minutes or so before chopping into pieces (I favour scissors) and eating.

Radish green, garlic scape and pistachio pesto

It recently dawned on me that radish greens are perfectly usable. I had always focussed on the bright pink orbs below and removed and composted the greens, but I recently tried eating them and found them quite good: they have a subtle, pleasant taste. Radish greens are best cooked (or pulverised, as here) as they are slightly hairy: use as you would nettles (or spinach).

Now is the season for garlic scapes. As they have a relatively subtle garlic taste I thought they might go well in a pesto, so I used radish greens for bulk and background, with garlic scapes for punchy flavour and pistachios for texture and additional taste.

2 cups packed radish greens
~5 garlic scapes, chopped into ~ 1 inch chunks*
1/4 cup shelled, unsalted pistachios (roasted or raw)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp lemon juice

Wash the radish greens and pack into a blender cup. Add the garlic scapes, pistachios, olive oil, salt and lemon juice. Use a wand blender to blend until smooth and well combined. It should be garlicky, but not overwhelmingly so.

I used this pesto as a base layer on top of pizza (with pumpkin seeds, thinly sliced courgette, black olives, pumpkin seeds, sauteed beet greens, dry tofu and sweetcorn kernels on top) made from frozen balls of dough (defrosted for ~ 2 hours) and the method from this recipe.


Made a good pesto: quite garlicky but that was the whole idea. Worked really well on pizza as baking toned down the taste intensity a little.

*Could substitute a similar quantity of wild garlic. If using regular garlic use much less: it has a far stronger garlicky taste.

Spring pizza

Ramps were the one I hadn't tried in the Northeast Spring trinity (the other two in the trinity being fiddleheads and morels). They are essentially wild leeks, and while they grow in other places too people seems to be particularly nuts about them around here. I'd given up hope of eating ramps this year: Spring is basically over, and I thought my last chance had come and gone in Philly. But then they were selling them in the canteen at work (about the last place I would have expected!): they weren't in the best nick but good enough and I couldn't resist, so I bought a bunch.

But then, what to do with them? I settled on pizza as a good way of extending a small quantity of a fancy ingredient. I decided they would go well with hazelnuts, but otherwise wanted to keep that one simple. But figured we would need more than one pizza, so made enough dough and a second pizza with a riot of colourful (mostly green) Spring tastes on it. I wanted to explore a few more things regarding pizza: hoping for a good, quickish dough recipe, using 00 flour (bought by accident a while ago when looking for pasta flour, but probably perfect for pizza?), pre-heating our cast-iron pan / sliding prepped pizza onto hot pan, and freezing dough for future use. Decided to try out Jamie Oliver's recipe, as it contained both 00, semolina and olive oil, all of which seemed right in pizza, and also it proves in one hour (not unreasonable).

For the dough:
(makes enough for 4 smallish or 3 bigger pizzas)
3 1/2 cups strong white bread flour / 00 flour
(or 2 1/2 cups strong white bread flour / 00 flour plus 1 cup finely ground semolina flour (pasta flour))
1/2 tbsp fine sea / desert salt
1 3/4 tbsp dried yeast
1/2 tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

Toppings for ramp pizza:
~4 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp dandelion-ramp miso
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 bunch (5) ramps, cleaned, trimmed, separated into bulbs and leaves and chopped
~8 hazelnuts, toasted and chopped (add after baking)

Toppings for green pizza:
1/2 cup frozen broad beans (without jackets), defrosted
1/2 cup frozen peas, defrosted
1-2 tbsp mint leaves
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon juice
salt+pepper
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 small bulb fresh spring garlic, trimmed and chopped (including green parts)
bunch of spring greens: nasturtium leaves, radish leaves, rocket leaves, roughly chopped (~1 cup when chopped)
5 black olives, de-pitted and chopped
1 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 piece of dry tofu, thinly sliced
flowers from 2 chive flowerheads (add after baking)

Mix the flours (I used the mixture of 00 and semolina) and salt with a fork, then dump on a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a large measuring jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes. Add some of the liquid mix to the well, then bring in the flour, continuing to add the liquid and bring in the flour gradually until you have used all the liquid and the dough starts to come together. Knead for about 10 min, until the dough is smooth and springy. Put the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave somewhere warm for about 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Meanwhile, prepare the toppings. For the ramp pizza, mix together the tomato puree, vinegar, 1 tsp olive oil, salt+pepper and miso, then thin with a little water until a good spreading consistency. Heat 1/2 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan, then add the white parts of the ramps and fry for a few minutes until starting to soften. Add green parts, season and fry for a minute or two more until wilted. For the green pizza, put the broad beans, peas, mint, 1 tsp olive oil, salt+pepper and lemon juice in a blender cup and blend until they become a smooth, green puree. Cook the garlic and spring greens together as for the ramps, adding the garlic first and then the greens.

Punch down the dough. Divide the dough into 3-4 balls (one per pizza). You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in clingfilm, in the fridge (or freezer) until required (I used two balls for this and put two more in the freezer*). For immediate use, roll a dough ball out to a rough circle about 1/4 inch thick. Transfer to a piece of baking paper scattered with semolina on top of a large wooden board. Put a pizza stone, cast iron pizza pan or baking sheet in the oven and heat to 450F. Arrange the toppings on the dough circle: smear the puree or sauce across the surface, taking it right up close to the edges, then sprinkle with the remaining ingredients (except stuff to be added after baking). Open the oven and carefully slide the paper and pizza onto the heated stone or pan. Bake for ~20 min, until the pizza is lightly browned and puffy around the edges. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a minute or two, then sprinkle with the final toppings (hazelnuts on ramp pizza, chive flowers on green pizza) before eating.


Both came out pretty good. The sliding onto pizza pan worked out pretty good, and the dough puffed up nicely (although there is definitely a sweet spot with thickness - it is possible to go too thin and end up with something super crispy that doesn't really puff up and browns instantly at the edges). I liked both topping combinations: ramps and hazelnuts definitely go well together, and the radish/nasturtium/rocket mix was very tasty with the green puree, sunflower seeds and pretty purple chive flowers.

*To use dough from the freezer, take frozen dough balls out to defrost ~2 hours before you want to use them (I had no problems with them sticking to the clingfilm or anything like that). When they are soft, you can roll them out as for the fresh dough and proceed from there. 

Chickpea flour pancake-pizza

Another very weird 24 hours: was woodturning late last night, finishing off my first bowl (!). When I left to bike home around 0045, I got to the JFK bridge and again, endless sirens: all shapes and sizes of cop cars whizzing along Mem Drive towards Watertown, and a cop boat in the river too. I eventually got across the road only to nearly get run down by another two cop cars coming over the bridge on the wrong side of the road, then cycled the rest of the way home dreading what I was going to see on the news when I got there.

Woke up this morning, bleary-eyed but ready to head to work, checked the news, and found the city was on lockdown: everyone in the city ordered to 'Shelter at Home' while the police conduct a manhunt (for a bombing / shooting suspect) in Watertown. All day we've been in a kind of limbo, reading news constantly while a warm, sunny Spring day passed by outside. I snacked fitfully and nervously all day, then by evening felt like I needed something real to eat...

I'd been meaning to try this recipe idea for a while. It's basically socca, simplified and restyled as a pizza.

For the base:
1/2 cup chickpea flour
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt+pepper
1 tbsp olive oil

For the onions:
2 tbsp olive oil
3 medium-large onions, peeled and finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 tbsp vinegary red wine
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp mixed dried herbs (basil, sage, rosemary, oregano)
salt+pepper
1 tsp honey

Other toppings:
8 salty, dry, black olives, de-stoned and chopped
2-3 tbsp chopped basil
2 pieces of dry 5-spice tofu, shredded
1-2 tbsp sesame seeds

Heat the oven to 450F and put a large, flat, cast iron pan in it to heat as well.

Whisk the base ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

Heat the olive oil for the onions in a medium frying pan with a lid, then add the onions and garlic. Cover and cook until well softened. Uncover, add the red wine, vinegar, dried herbs, salt and pepper and cook for a bit longer, until the liquid has mostly evaporated. Add the honey (or sugar) and cook for a minute or so longer, then set aside.

Take the cast iron pan out of the oven (careful, it will be very hot and heavy) and spread the chickpea mixture across it quickly and evenly. Put back in the oven for 5-10 min. Then take out again (the chickpea mixture should be cooked to make a crust), and spread the onion mixture across it. Sprinkle the other topping ingredients across the top: shredded dry tofu, chopped basil and olives, and sesame seeds. Put in the oven for another 5-10 min, until the tofu and seeds are lightly browned.


This was interesting: I liked the chickpea base but it came out quite thin, more like a pancake. Perhaps double the quantity another time? And / or try increasing the relative quantity of chickpea flour in the mix?

Squash, chanterelle and sage flatbread / pizza

My lab hosted a pumpkin themed happy hour on Friday, and it was out of control. We ran a pumpkin carving competition, delivering pumpkins to each lab / group (17 in total) a week in advance and then fanning a wildfire of competing posters from different groups advertising why you should vote for them (in homage to the upcoming election). Then on Friday we made a feast of pumpkin based food, decorated the department in orange and black, ran the ballots for the competition and awarded the trophies (gold-painted gourds on pedestals). The food making was epic: I hacked up 11 butternut squashes with a crappy knife and I've got a blister to prove it. Everything we made contained something squash: pumpkin bruschetta (baguette slices with a smear of baked squash, plus some combination of goat cheese, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, fresh coriander and seasoning), 'squashamole' (dip made with mashed baked squash, lime juice, chopped red onion, ground cumin, chopped coriander and seasoning) with hexagonal multigrain chips (Paul's special request / invention), roasted butternut squash and tofu chunks with rosemary / sage, wild and brown rice mix with toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh coriander, roasted squash seeds with cajun spice, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin-white chocolate muffins. We bought the baguettes and the pumpkin pies but we made pretty much everything else from scratch.

So, I couldn't imagine eating another squash after all that, what with the blister and the overexposure. But a lazy Sunday rolled around and S popped up wondering what was for lunch, and I remembered an idea I had of using baked squash instead of tomato sauce on pizza... And also that I had a tub of baked squash left over from happy hour in the fridge, plus a batch of bread mix, the last of the chanterelles and some rosemary and sage from Andrea's yard - seemed like an irresistible plan!

2 orange-sized chunks of dough
1-2 cups of baked squash (peel removed)
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper
1 small onion, finely sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
8 black salty olives, pits removed, torn into quarters
3/4 cup chanterelles, checked for imperfections and torn into large pieces (sliced chestnut mushrooms would be a decent out-of-season substitute)
1 tsp chopped sage leaves
1 tsp chopped rosemary leaves
semolina / corn meal for lining the baking trays
(optional cheese - S is still eating his way through the cheese mountain his mum left behind, so he put some brie and parmesan on his bits)

Heat the oven to 450F. Roll or stretch out the dough as thin as you can - try to get down to ~2 mm thick.  Move the pizza base to a baking tray pre-sprinkled with semolina or coarse corn meal (this quantity is for 2 pizzas).

Mash the baked squash with olive oil, salt and pepper. Smear the bases with the squash mixture, making an uneven covering 2-3 mm thick. Scatter the onion, garlic, olives, chanterelles and herbs over the top, and season / drizzle a wee drop more olive oil over the top.

Put the baking trays in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes / until the crust is crisp and starting to brown around the edges and the toppings are cooked. Remove, let cool for a minute and then eat.


This was a very successful experiment all round. It was a lovely, rich, colourful pizza topping combination that tasted great, and the base came out really crisp. The high speed bread mix worked great as pizza base (which is brilliant news - that stuff is super useful); lining the trays with semolina / cornmeal was much better than using flour; and the squash made a wonderful, very seasonal sauce (less wet than tomato although still moist, perhaps this contributed to the crispness).

High speed bread!

This is exciting!  After making flatbreads the other day, I was initially thinking: yeah, this is awesome, we can make these any old night, they don't take long.  Then I thought about it a bit more and realised that realistically, for a weeknight supper, even a 40 minute rising time just isn't going to cut it...

Then, somewhere on the internet, I stumbled across this method (also here).  It's a no-knead, minimal rising time bread method - absolute minimum effort.  You just mix up the dough, leave it at room temp for a few hours, then either use it right away or (this is the best bit) transfer it to the fridge and keep it there for up to 2 weeks, using it as and when you need it, with just a little resting time required for oven-baked loaves.  Sounded amazing - too good to be true?!

So I decided to try it out - I mixed up a batch one evening last week and this morning (~3 days after the initial mix making) I decided to make the bread: the quantity I'd mixed up should have been sufficient for 2 loaves, so I used half for a loaf baked in the oven, and made instant za'atar flatbreads out of the other half.

(NOTE: I usually make half the quantity below at a time, which is enough for 2 good sized pizzas and a couple of flatbreads, or 3-4 pizzas, or a couple of batches of flatbreads - this seems to be our usual intake over the couple of weeks the dough is good for)

1 1/2 tbsp dry yeast (3 tbsp / 25 g fresh yeast)
1 1/2 tbsp salt
6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (+more for dusting)
3 cups lukewarm water
cornmeal

In a large bowl, mix yeast, salt and water. Then mix in the flour, just until there are no dry patches. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature for 2 to 5 hours.

Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks.

For a small loaf:
(takes ~2 hour 10 min)
Cut off a grapefruit-size piece (~1/4 of the total quantity) with a sharp knife. Stretch in hands to make a small oval with a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Sprinkle baking tray with cornmeal, then put the shaped dough on it. Let rest for 40 minutes (or an hour and 40 min if dough refrigerated). Meanwhile, heat the oven to 450F. Put an ovenproof dish of water in the bottom of the oven. When ready to bake, slash the top of the loaf three times with a sharp knife. Sprinkle with flour or za'atar or seeds. Put the tray in the oven and bake for ~30 min, until browned and sounding hollow when tapped. Allow to cool before eating.

For flatbreads:
(takes only the time needed to roll out and cook the breads = 5-7 min per flatbread; this made about 6 so about 35 min)
Cut off a satsuma sized piece of dough (for small ones - use more for bigger ones). Flour a surface and rolling pin well, then roll out the dough piece into an approximate circle about 2 mm thick. Coat one side of the rolled out piece with a little olive oil (or could use veg oil, or marg). Heat a frying pan, then place the prepared dough piece oil side down in it. Cover and cook for about 2.5 minutes on that side, then flip (optionally sprinkle new top side with za'atar, salt, seeds, similar), cover and cook about 2.5 minutes on the other side. Keep warm while you cook more lumps of dough the same way, until you have the desired number of flatbreads.

Note: for garlic naan, while you are preparing the flatbreads as above, melt about 1 tbsp butter and 1/2 chopped garlic clove per flatbread together in the microwave or in a pan. Pour / spread a tbsp of mixture per bread as soon as it is cooked. Great with curry.

For pizza:
(takes only the time needed to shape dough, followed by about 20 min in the oven)
Put the oven on to heat to 400F, and put a pizza stone or cast iron in if you have one. Grab an orange sized piece of dough. Flour a clean surface generously, then squash, pull and roll the dough into the desired shape. Aim for a thickness of approx. 0.7cm - we have found that too thin ends up rather crispy-crunchy while too fat ends up a little doughy - no big deal if it's a bit off through, totally edible in any form. If using pizza stone, lay a piece of parchment paper big enough to fit the pizza base onto a flat, movable surface (large chopping board or upside down baking tray), then put the dough on top. If using a normal baking tray just move the dough directly to the baking tray. Arrange sauce and toppings on top of the base, then put straight in the oven for the baking tray, or slide together with the paper onto the hot stone if doing it that way. Bake for ~20 min, until lightly browned.


The flatbreads were brill, definitely a great anytime quick recipe and a great summer recipe as it is bread without oven. The za'atar sprinkled on top made them extra tasty (think I am having another za'atar moment). Pizza works similarly well.

The bread came out less well, but that is probably because I missed the bit about resting it for 1 hour 40 min and only rested it for 40 min (this was the recommendation if you're using a pizza stone: I don't have one).  It's tasty and edible, just the crumb is a bit dense and the loaf is therefore a bit small. Hmm, an hour and 40 min is a bit long...

S and I ate all the flatbreads for a Sunday breakfast (he had ~4 1/2, I had ~1 1/2). Meanwhile, I let the loaf rise, then baked it and also mixed up a new batch to put in the fridge. This seemed like quite a good combination / approach - instant bread plus bread for a bit later plus bread for sometime in the next 2 weeks, all in the same kitchen session.

Edit: I've been making flatbreads a lot, and experimenting with rolling stuff in the middle (in the style of these) - did some with za'atar and nigella seed, and some with some cooked spelt berries I had in the fridge - the former were fine but not really worth the bother when you can just sprinkle on top instead, the latter were a bit random in original thought but were actually really good - made the white-flour flatbread into a chunkier, more texturally interesting wholegrain version with very little bother.

Speedy pizza

A lazy morning, and we suddenly got hungry.  Something with bread, using some of the spinach and the yellow peppers needing eating...  I remembered this post on hipsterfood - no-knead, no-wait pizza dough?  Too good to be true?  Worth testing out, for sure...

1/2 cup warm water
1 tbsp dry yeast
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 cups flour (plus more for rolling out)

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 large yellow pepper, sliced
1 bag spinach
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
olive oil
salt+pepper

pesto (~4tbsp)

balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to ~400F.  Put the tomatoes, pepper and garlic into an oven tray with a little olive oil and seasoning.

Put the warm water in a medium sized bowl and mix in the yeast.  Let sit for ~5 min.  Then add salt, olive oil and flour and mix to a pliable dough.

Roll out dough on a baking sheet.  Rub all over with olive oil and put in the oven for 5 min.  Check on the tomato mix.

Wash and trim the spinach and put into a large pan.  Heat medium high until it is all wilted.  Transfer to a colander to allow liquid to drain.

When the crust is looking like it's started to firm up (5-10 min cooking), remove from the oven.  Spread on the pesto.  The tomato mix should be cooked by now - spread it over the pesto.  Add the spinach, spreading it out in clumps.  Put some salt and pepper over the top.  Return to the oven for another 5-10min.  Remove from the oven, sprinkle some balsamic vinegar on top and serve.


Definitely worth trying...  The crust was totally up to scratch - not perfect pizza, but let's face it we don't have a wood-fired oven here...  Might try splitting the dough and making 2 thinner ones another time.  Rolling out directly on the baking sheet was a good idea - much easier to avoid splitting.  Really surprisingly good - and how often do you feel like pizza and then feel like waiting for all the rising steps etc before you can eat it?

I am not a fan of fake cheese.  Real cheese or none at all.