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| Homemade Flatbread with with Cheese & Horseradish Cream, Dill & Roe |
I make the dough in advance and if the kids don't devour it right there and then, I store the extra dough in the freezer, oiled, wrapped in plastic wrap in a plastic container, so it doesn't dry out. Then we just take it out a few hours before we want to eat pizza. What makes this dough different is that it makes for extra crispy pizza (see tips below).
This time, I tried using the Panasonic Bread Maker, instead of making the dough by hand. It turned out well and saved me a lot of time! What would've taken me 2 hours to make took only 45 minutes with the bread maker.
So in this post, I'm going to share 2 recipes using the same dough. I will share some very different pizza flavours, and another recipe to show how you can use the very same dough to make some mini flatbread, topped with a mix of cream cheese and horseradish sauce, fish roe and dill. It really looks impressive and fancy, and makes for good hors d'oeuvres, but it's actually easy to make! My kids actually helped to cut the dough into squares and once baked, top them with the cheese mix, the cut fresh dill and the roe. Too beautiful to eat and definitely more than presentable enough to serve at parties. But we didn't have a party this weekend, so the kids just devoured them for their afternoon snack!
RECIPE 1: BASIC POLENTA PIZZA DOUGH
I like my pizza dough extra crispy. In order to do this, I have 3 tips to share with you:
1. Add polenta (cornmeal) to the flour mix instead of just making the dough with plain bread flour or all purpose flour. You can buy polenta at Fairprice supermarket and I'm pretty sure it's at other major supermarkets like Cold Storage or Jason's.
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| Raw Polenta Grain (Image Credit - http://www.carolfenstercooks.com/index.php/2012/09/save-time-eliminate-mess-making-polenta/) |
3. Use a pizza stone. Pizzas from a proper Italian pizzeria are usually really crispy because of the high heat provided by the wood fired oven. Of course, very few people have a wood fired oven at home, so a handy invention is the pizza stone, which further absorbs heat from the conventional home oven, and makes the temperature even higher. Mine is the Jamie Oliver brand, which has been fully seasoned and on which I've made a lot of pizzas and rustic, hand made bread.
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| This is my seasoned pizza stone. It's never washed (because it will crack if you do!), and stays at the bottom of the oven at all times, wrapped in foil, when not in use. |
220 grams bread flour
60 grams polenta
15 grams cold butter, sliced into small pieces (put it back into the ref after slicing, then just take it out when you start baking)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon powdered milk
1 teaspoon salt
190 ml cold water at around 5 degrees C (cool it down by adding some ice cubes in the beginning)
1 teaspoon dried, instant yeast
Extra polenta for sprinkling
Procedure:
1. Preheat your oven to maximum temperature. If you are using a pizza stone, put it on top of the rack, middle position, in your oven. If not, a flat, metal baking pan will do. Pour all the ingredients, except the yeast, into the bread maker's pan. Put the pan into the bread maker and close it.
2. Put the yeast into the dispenser. Close and select Menu 10. Press Start and wait for the bread maker to finish kneading the dough, about 45 minutes. In the meantime, enjoy life and do something else!
3. Make sure your surface is clean and sprinkled with flour so that the dough won't stick. Get the pan (use oven mitts!) and shake it upside down to unfree the dough. It will be a bit sticky, but keep shaking. The blade may come off and stick to the dough, but just keep shaking. Remove the blade.
4. Dust flour onto your hands and on your rolling pin. Divide the dough into three to make three pizzas. Roll flat, flipping and turning the dough after every time you roll.
Don't worry that it's not a perfect circle shape! Uneven shapes just make the pizza more interesting and have a rustic look. But if you really want a perfect circle, roll then put a plate upside down on top of the flat dough and press down to get a perfect circle shape. Remove excess dough around the plate (you can use it for crackers, see link to recipe below).
5. Put the flattened dough on a piece of baking paper. Tip: I usually put the paper with the dough on top of a chopping board. Then I put this chopping board right next to the pizza stone/baking pan (wear oven mitts!), then slide the paper onto the stone/pan by pulling it away from you and laying it on top of the stone/pan.
Bake for 7 to 10 minutes. Remove and turn crust over and put on your toppings. Put it back into the oven and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes, until crust is brown and toppings start to sizzle.
Here are some unusual pizza toppings that my family has made. This is not your usual, run of the mill flavours and makes for some interesting gourmet pizzas.
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| Fresh Fig and Anchovy Pizza, with freshly grated parmesan and mozzarella cheese, on a pesto base. Top with chili flakes. Grate the parmesan from a block; don't use the processed one from the green plastic bottle. :) |
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| Italian Salami with chili and mozzarella, topped with fresh arugula (added after baking), on an olive oil and grated garlic base. |
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| My son's concoction: El Diablo, made from a base of tomato puree, topped with spicy salami, chicken sausage, fresh chopped chili, garlic, onions and japaleno peppers. Very hot and spicy! And yes, you do need a drink on standby to handle the heat. |
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| My dessert pizza, made with a base of olive oil and chopped fresh rosemary, topped with sliced pear, chocolate chips, sliced almonds and sprinkled with brown sugar. |
So that's pizza. Now for some fancier looking stuff. On to my SECOND RECIPE for the very same dough.
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RECIPE 2: HOMEMADE FLATBREAD SQUARES WITH CHEESE & HORSERADISH CREAM, DILL & ROE
Ingredients:
Polenta dough, see above
2 tablespoons garlic and herb cream cheese. I used this brand:
2 tablespoons horseradish sauce (Adjust to level of spiciness to your liking)
Dash of freshly ground pepper
Chili flakes to taste
Sprigs of fresh dill
Roe (I used orange, trout caviar. You can use the black one too, but I just think the orange roe looks prettier against the green dill)
Procedure:
1. Make the pizza dough as per instructions above.
2. Preheat the oven to maximum. Put in your pizza stone or baking tin. (Preheating the stone or tin ensures that the surface is hotter and makes for a crispier finish.) Roll the dough flat. Make sure your surface, hands and rolling pin are sprinkled with flour so the dough doesn't stick. Section the dough into 1x1.5" squares. It doesn't matter if it's not even, for that rustic look. Pierce the dough squares with a fork, to release any air.
Note: you can also shape it into circles instead of squares, if you wish, using a cookie cutter.
3. Put the squares of dough on top of baking paper. Put the paper on top of the preheated stone/pan and bake for about 5 minutes until the edges turn brown. Midway, when the edges are starting to brown, take them out and turn them over, and bake the other side until slightly brown on the edges.
(Tip: I usually put the paper with the dough on top of a chopping board. Then I put this chopping board right next to the pizza stone/baking pan [wear oven mitts!] then slide the paper onto the stone/pan by pulling it away from you.)
4. In the meantime, while baking, mix together the cream cheese, mayonnaise, horseradish sauce, pepper and chili flakes, with a wire whisk.
5. Once the flatbread squares are done, take them out to cool. Once cool, spoon the cheese mix onto the crackers. Add a sprig of dill (cut small ones from the main stem) and add some roe. Arrange on a plate with more sprigs of dill. Admire your work of art and serve it to your guests. Be prepared to hear your guests' oohs and aahs, while whipping out their cameras. :) Enjoy!
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