Pizza Night

Thin Crust Zucchini Pizza

We've been here for more than a year now and have not found good authentic thin crust Italian pizza. Now that most of the unpacking has been done and our pizza stone unearthed, we decided to give it a go. (also that we've just purchased a pizza peel as we weren't sure if MAF would've allowed our old wooden one into this country). Anyway, tried we did and the results were rather good. Browsing through our books we found a copy of an easy and good recipe for pizza base (adapted from Jamie Oliver, thanks to Food Network). The pizza sauce, we were rather proud of, was a passata made from ripe red Tommy Toes from our own vege garden, as were the zucchini and basil. Yum. Nothing better than really fresh fruit and veg.

Kneading dough

Pizza Base:
7 cups bread flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
2 (1/4 oz) sachets dried yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2.5 cups luke-warm water

Sift the flour and salt onto a clean work surface or large metal bowl and make a well in the middle.
In a measuring cup, mix yeast, sugar, olive oil and warm water and leave for 10min to activate the yeast.
Pour into the well
Mix with fingers, gradually working flour in from the sides.
Knead till smooth, about 10min

Dough rising in bowl

Place in lightly greased bowl, turn over once to coat and cover top of bowl with damp towel or cling film and leave in warm place to double its size, (about 1h)
Punch dough down, divide into 8 portions (8 pizzas).
If you don't want to make so many pizzas, just pinch off what you need and place the rest into a ziplock and freeze till required.

Pizza Sauce / Tomato passata:

• Ripe tomatoes
• Garlic (to taste)
• fresh basil (to taste)
• salt

Roughly chop tomatoes.
Heat olive oil in saucepan, lightly saute garlic.
Add tomatoes, cook till soft, add a bunch of basil leaves, simmer for 5min.
Pass tomatoes through sieve.
Reduce sauce till desired consistency, add salt to taste.

Thin Crust Mushroom Pizza

Pizza toppings:
Anything you like - zucchini, mushrooms, we used our own hand made mozzarella :)

Pizza stone (removed from oven to illustrate proper placement) with pizza on top

Assembling and cooking:
Place pizza stone in middle shelf in oven.
Preheat at least 30min (1hour is better) to at least 200C (real Italian pizza ovens are heated in the range of 300C).

Rolled out pizza dough

Roll out the dough as thin as desired (tossing is a bit tricky and messes up the kitchen)
Transfer onto a pizza peel liberally coated with flour or cornmeal (the flour / cornmeal acts as a slippery base so that the pizza slips off the peel onto the stone)
Spread passata onto the base - you can also use pesto for a non tomato base
Add toppings - don't overload as it will be difficult to deliver the pizza successfully
Open oven door, place peel right over the stone and with a swift motion pull it back so that pizza is now on the stone. This may require a bit of practice. Quickly close door so as not to lose too much heat.
Bake for 5-10min
In the meantime, prepare another pizza (it works better if you have 2 peels)
Removing the pizza from the ovens is just reversing the steps for placing it in.

Enjoy!

Multigrain Bread

What with rising costs of rice, people have suggested eating potatoes. Why not bread? Yes, OK, wheat prices are on the up as well, but I love bread and sorely miss it every time I travel. Real bread, that is. Not the fluffy air filled Asian or Japanese variety. Real bread, without improvers, emulsifiers, preservatives. The sort that has real good mouthfeel, satisfying crunch of crust, moist chewy insides.
I decided I would make real bread weekly so that I would always have the real thing. Dusting off a recipe sheet, I went into a flurry of flour and made a dozen loaves in a fortnight. Practice makes perfect. Fortunately there were friends and relatives to fob off the edible end results. The not so good ones became oven baked crisps and breadcrumbs. My kitchen counter, espresso machine, living room and shoe rack acquired a fine coating of high gluten bread flour - which fortunately got blow away recently by the seasonal NE Monsoon blowing in from wash area.
My current favourite is Multigrain Bread, my own variant on a great Basic White Bread recipe.

Multigrain loaf (makes 2 x 1lb loaves)

• 4-4.5 cups bread flour
• 0.5 cup multigrain berries, mod ground*
• 1 sachet dry yeast
• 1 tsp flaxseed meal
• 2 tsp salt / 4 tsp kosher flaked salt
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1/4 cup warm water (blood temperature)
• 1.5 cups cold water**
• * mix equal amounts unpolished rice, wheat and rye berries
• ** it is so hot in Singapore that cold water allows a nice slow rise resulting in an even crumb

1. Wake up the yeast with warm water and sugar (abt 5-10min)
2. Mix all dry ingredients together, form well in centre
3. Add yeast, mix in enough water to form a soft dough
4. Turn dough out onto floured surface, adding more flour as necessary to make it workable. Knead till smooth and elastic, about 10-15min. Form into smooth ball.
5. Lightly grease a large bowl, place dough into it, turning over once to give a coating of grease
6. Cover and let rise till doubled in size (about 2h)
7. Punch down dough, turn out onto floured surface, divide into 2 equal portions
8. Gently roll or spread out each into a rectangle, as long as the baking tin
9. Roll up like a jelly roll, tucking ends in
10. Place into greased and floured baking tins, cover and let rise for another 1.5h (or overnight in fridge)
11. Heat oven to 220C (preheat x 15min at least)
12. Place loaves in, baking at 220C for 15min then 200C for another 15-20min
13. Turn out onto baking rack. If done, loaves should sound hollow when tapped undersurface
14. Cool thoroughly before slicing
15. If a nice crust is desired, spray oven sides and bottom with water when putting loaves in and midway through the baking process.