Hey Mario, I made some pizza

In the past week I've been making home-made pizza. The reason was because my Good Taste magazine (or maybe it was BBC Good Food) had a few delicous looking pizza recipes but in the end I ended up using the pizza dough recipes off Taste.com.au.

The first time I used the basic recipe for one base, I haven't used yeast before but seeing as it was around one cup of water, I used a mug to mix the yeast in. I left it for the ten minutes and when  came back it has foamed up nicely.

As I was still setting up a few things, it rose even more that it seemed like it was a souffle (a yeast souffle O_O!). I mixed it into the flour and kneaded for the ten minutes and let it rise, it did double in about half-an-hour but I didn't use it until around 3 hours later so it was even bigger and very airy.

I ended up making two pizzas though was hard put trying to stretch it to a 30cm diameter. I made a sea salt and roemary pizza as well as a cheesy potato pizza because I didn't have tomato paste for a pizza base and barely enough cheese.

 

The second time I made the other recipe but at first the yeast didn't bubble at all. Not sure what happened, whether the water was too hot or cold as the consistency only changed a tiny bit at the bottom of the bowl. I remade the yeast mixture after getting home and while watching the water I saw the yeast bubble up - which looked pretty amazing! The end result wasn't like in the mug but that may have been because of the surface area. This time I made it with plain wheat flour as a healthier option and made 4 pizza bases, one is still in the freezer!

I made a simple tomato base, ham, kransky and mozzarella pizza which was quite nice. Thanks to my sister for buying all the toppings! I then practised a cheesey crust with cheddar cheese, I didn't really make it carefully! Some pickled cucumbers were added to the top although they lost most of their tangy flavour. I then made an over-the-top pizza with way too much cheese, and all the other toppings, it also had some BBQ sauce, bocconcini and avocado. I was supposed to make the potato pizza again but left the potato in the oven for too long so ended up having them as potato chips -_-.

 

 

The yeast and the warm water

I don't really watch Master Chef that much (I really should!!!) but I did catch the Master Class episode where they taught us how to make crumpets (which is the initial reason I picked up a packet of yeast - haven't made them yet!). The 'warm' water for the yeast should be a comfortable temperature of 37 degrees celcius which is body temperature, so when you put your finger in you suposedly can't feel anything because it's the same temperature. (They don't mention this on the website so hopefully I remembered my facts correctly!)

Recipe on Master Chef: Green Eggs and Ham with Homemade Crumpets
Pizza Dough for 1 base
Pizza Dough for 3 bases

On another note, my friend TC lent me this cool book and I think I will be making some corn bread soon ^_^

image from Amazon ;)

http://www.amazon.com/Baking-One-Step-at-Time/dp/0600619532