Tag Archives: delia smith

Homemade pizza

09 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by in bread, italian, kids, pizza sauce, quick and awesome, Sauces, the basics, tomato sauce, Vegetarian

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homemade pizza
If you’re daunted by homemade pizza, don’t be. It takes about 15 min to prepare the dough, an hour to rise while you do something else and another 15 min to cook. If you are home by 6, you can eat by 7:30. It’s cheap and you didn’t have to go anywhere.
Not having a pizza stone or a brick oven fireplace, this is my favorite pizza dough recipe (from Delia Smith’s ‘How to Cook Book One’):

Ingredients
makes 2 pizzas
350g plain or bread flour
8 fl oz of hot water (boil the kettle and mix with cold purified water to get the right temp)
2 tsp dried active yeast
1 tsp sugar
2 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt

Quick garlicky tomato sauce
3-4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 tin of plum tomatoes or 1/2 a large tin
olive oil
fresh or dried basil
salt and pepper
1 tsp sugar
dash rice vinegar (optional)

1) Mix dry ingredients together. Drizzle the olive oil and mix again.
2) Add the water and mix with a wooden spoon till roughly combined.
3) Dump on a clean work surface and knead for a few minutes until the dough becomes a soft squishy ball. It’s ok if at first it isn’t all sticking together. You shouldn’t need to add any extra flour to your work surface.
4) Place in an oiled bowl and cover tightly. If the covering is loose, the dough will develop a ‘skin’. Keep in a warm place for an hour until about doubled in size. An option is to warm the oven slightly, then turn off the heat and put the dough in there.
– While it is rising, make a quick sauce or use a homemade sauce you made earlier.
– Heat up olive oil in a sauce pot and gently fry the garlic for a few seconds.
– Add in the tomatoes and seasoning. Use a potato masher to break up the tomatoes.
– Cover with a lid and simmer on a medium heat for about 15-20 minutes.
– Blitz with a handheld blender.
– Taste and adjust seasoning.
5) Check on the dough after an hour. If it has risen nicely, Punch down, then gently knead again and cut in two.
6) Flour the work surface and then roll the dough out into the shape of your pan (circle or rectangle).
7) The best technique is to roll the pizza dough into a small circle shape and then a) pick up the small circle of dough, hanging on to the very edge so that the weight of the dough stretches itself. b) Move along all the outer edge with your fingers, letting the dough stretch out all sides. This is easier than flipping it up into the air! c) Place the dough back onto the work surface and roll out as big as you like. The dough should now be smooth and pliant. I recommend rolling out quite thin for a thin crispy pizza. Repeat with the other half of dough.
8) Sprinkle baking trays with corn meal to keep the pizza from sticking during baking. No need to use oil.
9) Bake on a high heat (400F) on the upper racks for about 10-15 minutes.

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The kids had a split tomato-cheese with ricotta-cheese pizza and we had green chard, ricotta and kalamata olive
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homemade pizza

English Farmhouse Loaf

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in bread, British, comfort food, English farmhouse loaf, the basics

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english farmhouse loaf
I can’t stop thinking about this Paleo diet movement. To me it’s a movement as so many friends have joined up and are trumpeting its benefits. I’m conflicted. On the one hand I love the idea of not eating anything processed at all but on the other hand, I just don’t want to eat meat. Oh. And, um, I eat a lot of bread. I am going to cut down on all this bread eating, really. Not give up; just some healthy moderation.

But for the times when you want it, need it and maybe even love it, here’s a spectacular recipe for a homemade loaf of bread. And even now, I hear my paleo friend’s voice say, “At first it’s hard, then bread begins to disgust you.”

On that note, The English Farmhouse Loaf!

This recipe comes from Delia Smith’s book How to Cook, Book One. I love that title. It truly is a ‘How to cook’ book. I mean, like, how-to-boil-an-egg. I’m terrible at poaching eggs and I know someday when I face this particular and intense fear of ineptly poaching an egg into a slobbery mess, this book will guide me true.

Delia’s bread recipe is called the ‘Plain and Simple White Bread’

english farmhouse loaf
Ingredients

700g bread flour (4 and 3/4 cups)
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp sugar
15fl very warm water

Bread flour

bread dough rising

shaping the dough

shaping the dough
1. A great Delia bread trick is to warm up the flour in the oven on a very low setting before you even start. This makes a difference.
2. Add in the rest of the dry ingredients and mix.
3. Add in the warm water and mix with a wooden spoon.
4. Dump on a sparkling clean counter and knead the dough for a few minutes until it is smooth and shiny.
5. Lightly oil a bowl and put in the dough to rise. cover with a tea towel and keep in a warm place for about two hours. (One hour will work too, but the longer the better). I usually pick the oven. But turned off, naturally.
6. Preheat the oven to 450F or 230C.
7. After the dough has doubled in size, knock the air out and knead again for a couple of minutes. Shape into a bread loaf by folding one side in and the other side on top of it.
8. Butter and flour a loaf pan and place the shaped bread dough in, seam side down.
9. Bake in the oven about 40 or 45 minutes. The bread is ready when it is golden brown on top and it makes a hollow sound when you knock on the bottom.

I took a french-bread making course once and as soon as the instructor pulled our finished baguettes out of the massive industrial oven, he ordered us to eat them with a good slab of butter. “This is THE best time to eat bread,” he intoned, “Straight from the oven.”

So obvious, but so true!

fresh bread and butter