Easy Peasy Pizza Dough

Some things matter. World peace, falling in love, getting an education, spending time with your family... and using fresh pizza dough. The flavour of fresh dough improves any pizza and with a recipe this fast and easy theres no excuse for using a pre-made base when you can take your pizza to the next level whipping up this quick delicious base.

Easy Peasy Pizza Dough

Prep time: (20 plus proving time) Cooking time:As needed by pizza recipe  Serves:6

Ingredients:

• 750g plain flour
• 250g wholemeal flour
• 14 grams of yeast
• 2 teaspoons of fine sea salt
• 2 tablespoons of castor sugar
• 600ml-650ml warm water
•  3 tablespoons of olive oil

Method:

1.In a jug or bowl, mix water, oil, yeast and sugar, cover with gladwrap and set aside for 3 minutes.

2. In a large mixing bowl or bowl of your mixmaster using a dough hook, add in your flour and salt.

3. In a mixing bowl form a well and add yeast mixture and use a fork to bring in the sides of the well and gradually combine until a rough ball is formed. If using a mixmaster turn onto the dough 'kneed' setting and pour in yeast mixture.

4. Kneed until mixture is clumped together in a rough ball.

5.Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and kneed until the ball is smooth and springs to the touch. 

6. Place the dough into a bowl lightly sprayed with oil and cover with a tea towel dampened in warm water and leave in a warm place for roughly an hour or until doubled in size.

7. Put the dough back onto a flour dusted service and knock the air out of it by kneeding it again and divide the dough into 6 even pieces, if freezing wrap in glad wrap and freeze immediately.

8. If using straight away, roll the dough into a circle or a rectangle about .5-1cm thick, place on a pizza tray or baking tray sprayed with oil and top with your favourite pizza toppings and bake until the bottom is crispy. 

*Tip* When cooking pizza from the frozen dough, make sure you allow the dough to become fully thawed and room temperature before its rolled.

The perfect sausage roll

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! I'm sorry for my absence.. it seems I thought I was a bit better at understanding blogger than I really am. I set up a quite long queue of recipes which somehow didn't post and has also disappeared from the face of the earth (or should I say, the face of blogland). If anyone knows what could have caused this/ if theres anyway to get them back your insight would be highly appreciated. Luckily I still had some edited photos on my laptop so I'll be able to retype some including this one I'm giving you today. From memory, the opening for this recipe was some witty remarks about how sausage rolls can be perfect for every occasion, perfect for every kind of person and perfectly easy to make for lunch dinner ... which is still all very true. This is an amended family recipe and can be as plained or jazzed up as you wish, the possibilities are endless. 

The Perfect Sausage Roll

Prep time:20 (using pre-made pastry)  Cooking time:30  minutes  Serves:6

Ingredients:

• 500g sausage mince
• 1 packet puff pastry slightly thawed or 2 quantities of puff pastry (link below)
• 2 large carrots
• 2 cloves of fresh garlic or 2 1/2 teaspoons or minced garlic paste
• 1 brown onion
• 1/4- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 1tbs worcestershire sauce
• Salt
• Cracked pepper
• 2 eggs

Method:

1. If making puff pastry from scratch, follow directions found in this link here to allow for chill time (for the purpose of this recipe I made puff pastry from scratch, images shown below). If using pre-made frozen pastry then take from the freezer to allow to thaw slightly. 

Pastry at the 'breadcrumb' stage

Pastry at the 'clumping' stage

The folding and rolling of the pastry

2. Preheat oven to 200c 

3. Cut the tops from carrots and chop in half (or smaller depending on the abilities of your food processor), peel and quarter onion, peel garlic and add all these ingredients and your bunch of parsley to your food processor and chop until pieces are small and well combined. 

4. In a large mixing bowl combine vegetable mixture, sausage mince, worcestechire, salt, pepper and 1 egg and use hands to combine, alternatively this can be done in a mixmaster on the 'dough' setting.

5. Once the mixture is well incorporated, slowly add breadcrumbs and mix until your sausage mixture can hold a sausage shape when squeezed into it but is still slightly gooey to the touch.

6. Cut the square of puff pastry into 2 or roll a portion of your pastry into a rectangle that is approximatley 20 x 10cm. Beat 1 egg and set aside with a pastry brush.

7. Working a centimetre in from the edge closest to you, spoon a sausage width amount along the length of the pastry with a little extra built up on the end. 

8. Brush the beaten egg along the opposite length of pastry, fold over the top edge of pastry and continue rolling until a log shape has formed. Brush the tops of sausage rolls with beaten egg.

9. Cut the sausage rolls into even sized pieces and place on a baking tray, seam side down and brush with beaten egg. Repeat for the remaining sausage mixture and pastry.

10. Bake sausage rolls for 20-30 minutes until dark golden and serve hot with homemade tomato relish.

Lemon and coconut syrup cake

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well not today! A lemon and coconut syrup cake was on the menu today for a little afternoon treat. It originally started off just as a way to use up some of the abundance of lemons my parents had on their tree (thanks again!) but a normal lemon cake is something I make regularly so I decided to add some coconut for another flavour dimension and make this cake with greek yogurt making it delectably moist.

 

Lemon and coconut syrup cake

Prep time:20  Cooking time:40  minutes  Serves:8

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup lemon juice (for me this was 2 and a half lemons)
• Zest of a large lemon
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1 cup of greek yoghurt
• 2 cups of self raising flour 
• Shredded coconut to top 

{For lemon syrup}

• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• zest of 2 lemons
•  1/2 cup castor sugar
• 2 tbs of water

Method:

1. Preheat oven to and grease cake tin. Make sure it ISN'T springform as you will be pouring syrup over it while in the tin and don't want to lose any of the sweet flavour. I used a silicon heart mould from ikea.

2. In a large mixing bowl crack the eggs and beat together with the sugar until they are pale and creamy.

3. Zest and juice the lemons and stir into the egg mixture.

4. Pour in the yoghurt and coconut oil to the batter and stir to combine.

5. Sift over self raising flour and fold into mixture. 

6. Pour into tin and bake for 30-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. While the cake is baking make the syrup as directed in the following steps.



7. In a small saucepan combine ALL ingredients listed for lemon syrup. Stir over a low-medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and syrup has thickened. 

8. Immediatley after pulling the cake from the oven, stab at least 20 more holes into it so the syrup will sink in more easily and pour syrup onto the cake in an even layer.

9. Add the shredded coconut to the pan that held the syrup and this will absorb any left over juices. Then top the cake with the shredded coconut.

10. Stand cake for at least 15 minutes to absorb syrup (I left mine for around 25).

11. Remove  cake from tin and place onto a plate or serving platter and serve cold with extra greek yoghurt or warm with thickened cream.