I added a touch of colour to the glaze which is why if you look closely it has a pink haze.
After mixing the dough all there was was to set it aside at room temperature for about 1 1/2 hours. I then rolled it out and then with a cookie cutter I cut out 12 donuts. I then cut the centres out using a deoderant can lid as I didn't have a small enough cutter.
I then let them rest on baking parchment for 40 minutes before deep frying them for about 50 seconds on each side. Really nice donuts but as with all donuts they soon lose their freshness so eat them up quickly!
I've been making pizza for a couple of years now, it's been an uphill battle at times but am now in a position where i'm "comfortable" inviting friends round and baking pizza - which in fairness I guess was always my goal.
After trying many (and I mean many!) dough recipes, this is by far my favourite and it's taken from Tony Gemignani's "The Pizza Bible" book. It makes simply the best pizza (my wife disagrees, she prefers a much more crips and thin base with no lovely scrumptious dough handle around the rim).
My cooking method was taken from a book called "Artisan Pizza" as I use a conventional home oven.
Recipe: 456g Strong white flour (I use a 14.2% Canadian flour) 2.5g dried yeast 10g salt 225ml ice water 70ml luke warm water 5g diastatic malt 5ml olive oil
The above made three pizza at about 13" in diameter
Method:
I mixed the flour, ice water, malt, yeast and 200ml of the ice water in my mixer on a low speed.
Meanwhile, mix the 70ml luke warm water and the yeast and sit for 10 minutes
I then added this to the dough and kept mixing, after 5 minutes I added the olive oil and sugar and mixed for a further 5 minutes.
Bulk Ferment I put this all in a tupperware tub and put it in the fridge for about 30 hours
Shape and prove Next I took the dough out of the fridge, let it sit for about 30 minutes then shaped into 3 balls, popped them back in the tupperware tub and put them back in the fridge for about 12 hours.
Baking I pulled the tub out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter before I began shaping the pizza base.
Shaping I'm a shaping novice but what I do is press the dough out on the counter making a nice rim then I use a stretch and quarter turn using the heels of my hands, when it's something like I put it on my steel peel and add my passatta , cheese and topping.
Baking I put a steel plate on my hob and cranked up the flame below it til i got it to 450C, meanwhile my oven is cranked up to full. The pizza is transfered from the peel to the steel on the oven and it cooks for about 1min 30 seconds (any longer and you're running into burn territory) and then I put the whole thing in the over for about 3 minutes for the last minute I turn on the grill (broiler?).
I love the way this dough creates huge bubbles which get a nice char on them. The dough is a fantastic tasty, chewy sensation and it really lifts my pizza to the next level.
So I thought I'd experiment a little and try a rye flour. I'm a very amateur baker so please bare with me if my terms aren't the correct ones!
Starter: 50g canadian flour (14.2% protein) - bought from Sainsbury's, UK 50g water
I left this for 10 days, halving it every day and replacing that with fresh flour and water.
Bread: 350g Dove's Farm White Rye Flour 100g Canadian White Flour 100g of my above starter 300ml water 10g salt
I mixed all the flour, start and water my hand pretty roughly and let it sit for 30 minutes, there's a good chance I was "autolysing" at this point althought I may well be wrong!!
Next I sprinkled the salt and then give it another mix by hand so it was consistent. I then folded and turned the mixing container a quarter turn and repeated till I was back at the start. This is something I'd seen on youtube.
I popped the lid back on and left it for an hour, I then went back and did my fold and turn thing again - and then again 30 minutes later. It was getting late so I put it in the fridge and went to bed and then work.
It having sat for about 18 hours in the fridge, I took it out and let it sit at my kitchen's ambient temperature which I'm guessing is about 20C. I then flopped it out onto the worktop and shaped it into a bowl with "good tension", I picked it up and plopped it into a wooden banneton and let it sit for another 1 hour or so.
I preheated the oven to 250C with my biggest casserole dish in it while this happened.
Having risen quite nicely, I turned over the banneton and to my surprise it came out easily. I carefully picked up the bread and dropped it into the casserole dish and baked as follows:
35 minutes with the lid on at 240C 15 minutes with the lid off at 220C (this may have been more like 12 minutes as my daughter was insistent that it was burning).
Let it cool for an hour and voila! my first rye bread.
I have to say it was lovely and chewy with a nice taste to it which seemed stronger towards the centre of the loaf - that is pieces cut from the centre tasted stronger.
Toasted a few pieces for breakfast and I was very happy with it to say the least.
