Pizza Bases and Pita Bread

Tags

Fennel, Fresh from the oven, Pita, Pizza

One of the challenges of making home made pizza is to get both the base and the topping cooked correctly. It’s all too easy to end up with an undercooked base or a carbonised topping. A solution I like is to pre-bake the bases, and I recently came across a very good recipe, courtesy of the Fabulous Baker Brothers, which I have adapted below. The mix of ingredients make for a very good flavour, which is further enhanced by the very long and slow rises which I have used.

As it happened, the Fresh from the Oven challenge for June, hosted by Anita at Slice of My Life, was for Pita breads. I realised that both the dough and the method for these was very similar to the one I use for pizza bases, so I decided to include both in one recipe. I have never been very inspired by Pita breads in the past, but as with Bagels, I discovered that the home made variety are definitely far superior to the ones you find in the shops.

Ring Biscuits with Cardamom – Ciambelline al Cardamo

Tags

Biscotti, Biscuits, Cardamom, Vanilla

These may not be the most glamourous of biscuits to look at, but waft one under your nose, and you won’t be able to resist the heavenly aroma of cardamom. They have a lovely crunchy texture too, enchanced by their coating of sugar. Think Kulfi (Indian ice cream) in biscuit form.

Puccette Pugliesi – Puglian Rolls

Tags

puccette, puccia, Puglia, quanti modi di fare e rifare

These round rolls from the “heel” of Italy were the subject of this month’s challenge from the on-line Italian cooking group Quanti Modi di Fare e Rifare. From my researches it appears that they can be made with a number of different flours, and with or without the addition of ingredients such as olives, tomatoes or potatoes. So I felt I had a fairly free hand in adapting the gluten free recipe provided by Vale in order to make a non-GF one. My dough ended up rather like one for Ciabatta, but with the addition of the mashed potato she recommended.

The resulting rolls were light in texture and tasty. I don’t know if they were authentic but they were certainly good to eat.

Questi panini rotondi sono stati il soggetto della sfida di questo mese di Quanti Modi di Fare e Rifare. Dalle mie ricerche risulta che possono essere fatte con diverse farine, e con o senza l’aggiunta di ingredienti come olive, pomodori e patate. Così ho pensato che avessi mano libera per adattare la ricetta priva di glutine fornita da Vale per farne una versione con glutine. Il mio impasto è stato un po’ come quello per la ciabatta, ma con l’aggiunta delle patate schiacciate come raccomandato da lei.

Non so se le mie puccette fossero autentiche, ma erano certamente leggere e gustose.

Pane Siciliano – Sicilian Bread

Tags

Aniseed, Batuffolando, mafalda, occhi, Pane Siciliano, Semola rimacinata, Sesame, SIcilian Bread, Sicily

Una versione italiana di questo post si trova qui.

Last September, we spent a week on Marettimo, the most remote of the Egadi Islands off the northwest coast of Sicily. It would take a long time to do justice to the wonders of this enchanting island. Apart from the beautiful scenery and crystal clear sea, it is a paradise for lovers of fish and seafood. I’m afraid I don’t really fall into that category, but my partner most definitely does. So we visited a number of the excellent fish restaurants on the island, where I endured quite a bit of good-natured abuse and the occasional look of contempt from the proprietors, when I asked if they could serve me with meat.

But I had no qualms about the bread. Golden brown and crusted with sesame, its crumb a lovely yellow, and with a rich and elusive flavour, it was some of the best bread I’ve ever tasted. In Palermo, where we spent a few frenetic days at the end of our holiday, the sesame was enhanced by a little bit of aniseed.