Sourdough Pizza

I have adopted this recipe from Jamie Oliver's book 'Jamie's Italy'. I love this book and love Jamie, he's got so many delicious recipes, so here goes:

Makes: 4 large (or 6 medium) pizzas

Crust:

300 g white organic stone ground strong flour

150 g white sourdough starter (same as here but made with white organic all purpose flour)

1 tbsp raw organic honey

1 tsp with a hip unrefined sea salt

150 g lukewarm filtered water and grass-fed organic raw milk (50 / 50)

Toppings (all ingredients organic):

1) Salami, courgette, basil, tomato and mozzarella, black pepper and sea salt

2) fried up unsmoked streaky bacon, sauteed onion, mozzarella, sweet pepper, tomatoes, black pepper and sea salt

3) garlic, parsley, black pepper and sea salt (''garlic bread'')

4) kids' pizzas with organic no-poo or home-made ketchup (my son doesn't like the tomato sauce), grass-fed pork chipolata sausages or any other organic sausages of your kids' liking, sweet peppers, sea salt

or any topping of your liking

Basic Tomato Sauce:

2 midium organic tomatoes

1 clove organic garlic

bunch organic basil leaves (trimmed)

grass-fed organic raw butter

sea salt and black pepper

First you need to make the crust. Bring all the ingredients together for the crust and knead for about 10 minutes by hand. Place the dough into the slightly floured dusted bowl and cover with cling film. Leave to ferment overnight or at least for 8 hours.

In the morning, the next day, knead the dough for about 1-2 minutes, cover in a bowl and leave for 2-3 hours to proof.

About half an hour before you want to bake your pizzas heat the oven with the baking stone inside to 250⁰C. I use my baking stone, but you can use any baking tray.

At the same time start preparing your toppings and tomato sauce. For tomato sauce you need to heat the frying pan with some butter, slightly fry chopped garlic for a bout 1 minute, then add some chopped basil leaves and add tomatoes (to remove the skins simply grate the tomato on the carrot grater), season with black pepper and sea salt. Simmer this for 15 minutes on the medium heat to reduce some of the water from tomatoes.

While the tomato sauce is simmering you can prepare your toppings for quick and easy application. All the quantities are up to your taste. Chop thinly courgettes, tomatoes, fry up  streaky bacon with salt and pepper, cut and fry chipolata sausages, cut a small onion into thin rings and saute in some butter with a bit of sea salt and a bit of brown sugar or rapadura until caramelised, finely cut up sweet peppers into long strings, cut up mozzarella or tear it into chunks, wash some basil leaves and parsley,  grind some sea salt and black pepper. I usually place each ingredient into a separate little bowl for convenience.

Now you are ready to actually make pizzas. Take your dough and divide it into 4 (or 6) pieces, set aside 3 (5) of them and roll one thinly (1-2 mm) on lightly dusted surface into almost round shape and place it on the parchment paper (in order to easily transfer it to the baking stone I place the parchment paper onto a cutting board). Apply the tomato sauce, toppings and bake for 10 - 15 minutes depending on your oven until golden and crispy. 

Sourdough Molasses Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:

For the dough:

50 g white active sourdough starter

40 g organic unsulphured molasses

1/3 tsp unrefined sea salt

100 g organic pasteured grass-fed milk

70 g organic grass-fed butter

360 g organic white all purpose flour

For the filling:

4 tbsp organic cinnamon

50 g organic coconut sugar (date sugar, succanat or honey)

1 tbsp organic raw honey

40 g organic grass-fed butter

Instructions:

For the dough, gently combine butter, milk and molasses in a saucepan over low heat until well-blended and heated to blood temperature. Mix this together with the rest of the ingredients and knead well for 10 minutes until the dough is soft and elastic. Cover with a cling film in a bowl and leave to rise and ferment for minimum of 8 hours or overnight.

When ready to make the rolls heat the oven to 180 C and roll out the dough to about 1 cm thickness. Prepare the filling by gently melting the butter combined with cinnamon, sugar and honey. Spread the filling as evenly as possible over the rolled out dough. At this point you can sprinkle with any variations of raising, cranberries, other dried fruits and nuts. I didn't as I am not a big fan of those in the baked goods. 

Now you need to gently roll the dough to form a tube. Cut the tube with a very sharp knife or a special string into 2 cm pieces and place them onto the cookie sheet lined with unbleached parchment paper.

Bake until golden brown. It took me around 30 minutes but this will largely depends on your oven. Cool them down a bit and have them with tea, coffee, milk or on their own. They keep best in an airtight container at room temperature. Or you can freeze some in the zip bag and defrost them in the oven later.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Vanilla Pretzels Russian Style - Sushki

Ingredients:

70 g active white sourdough starter

80 g raw honey

1 egg

50 ml raw milk

50 g butter (melted)

1,5 tsp vanilla extract

325 g white all purpose organic flour

½ tsp sea salt

Equipment:

Mixing bowl

Plastic Wrap

Baking sheet and parchment baking paper

Medium pot for boiling

Water, preferably filtered

Big plate and kitchen towels or tea towel

dough cutter/bench scraper or chef’s knife

skimmer or large spoon with holes

Instructions:

Mix everything together to form soft dough, knead it for 5 minutes. Leave it in a bowl covered with cling film overnight or at least for 8 hours to ferment.

Next day the dough will be slightly oily and soft. Divide the dough into 6 parts, leave 5 aside covered with cling film and roll 1 part of the dough between your hands into a sausage approximately 3 cm thick. Then using chef’s knife or dough cutter/bench scraper cut the sausage into small parts ½ cm thick.

Without using additional flour roll each small piece between your hands or on the kitchen surface with one hand to form a long and thin rope, pick it up and connect two ends to form a ring and roll them together a little bit between your fingers so  they stick together and do not come apart. Leave the ring aside on the kitchen counter. Repeat the same with all the ropes.

Somewhere half way through the rolling process fill half a medium pan with preferably filtered water and bring the water to boil. At the same time heat the oven to 200 °C.

Putting around 10 at a time, boil the rings in the water for 30 seconds, they need to float to the surface of the water. Fish them out with skimmer or large spoon with holes. Place the boiled rings onto a large plate lined with a kitchen towel or a tea towel to absorb the water from the rings.   

After you done, throw another batch of rings into boiling water. While they are boiling, place the drained rings onto the baking parchment lined baking sheet, place the rings half a cm apart as they will slightly expand and stick together if placed too close to each other. Fish out the next batch of rings onto the plate to drain and throw the next, continue till all done. 

When the baking sheet is full place into the heated oven and bake for around 15 min checking every 7 minutes or so and turning the sheet if necessary. The rings should be golden brown, but do not worry if you burn a few they are still really tasty.

While the rings are in the oven, make more rings from the next piece of dough and continue until all done.

They are really good on their own or dipping into jam and washing with raw organic milk.