Flat Bread Pizza's

You can't beat a good pizza!! Whether it is a deep pan  loaded with cheese or an elegant thin crust with sumptuous toppings. They can be dressed up or dressed down, served as a main or as a side or eaten just as a snack. I used to love deep pan pizza but now sway toward the thin crust as I love to gorge on the flavour of the toppings and not feel too breaded out. Deep pan does have it's place though, for me this is on a movie or sports night, when drinks are flowing and entertainment is had.

Today I decided to make a thin crust pizza using my flat bread recipe and loaded it up with sour cream, pesto, tomato, cheese and olives. This went perfectly with the left over salmon from last night and a fresh zucchini lemon dressed salad.

Flat bread Pizza (Makes 2)
For the base:
1 3/4 Cups All purpose Flour
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
3/4 Tbsp Salt
1/2 Cup Water
1/3 Cup Olive Oil

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and place a baking sheet on the middle shelf. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together into a large bowl and mix well. Make a well in the middle of the flour and slowly pour in the oil and water and mix into a dough. Kneed four to five times, you  may need to add a little more water if dough is too dry.  Divide dough into two pieces. Wrap one in clingfilm whilst rolling the other out on parchment paper finely to approx 5mm. Spread a thin layer of tomato paste over top add pesto and sour cream and then load with you favorite toppings. Repeat with the remaining piece of dough.

Transfer the pizza whilst still on the parchment paper onto the baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until the base and toppings are golden brown. Allow to cool for 5 minutes then serve.

Cornbread

I have wanted to make corn bread for a while now but the thing was I had never had any up until yesterday. Ian and I had a very rare day off together (well that's how it feels at the moment we are like ships passing in the night) and decided to go out for brunch. We stumbled upon a Louisiana style restaurant half way during our walk and both dived into the front door after reading the menu. Ian chose the cowboy breakfast and I chose eggs with green peppers and cilantro over corn bread. Da da da, the corn bread was amazing. The first thing I noticed was that it was sweet, but not sickly sweet. It was just yummy yummy yummy, that's my professional opinion.

Having looked at a few recipes I found that it was not that dissimilar to a cake batter. I found a recipe that I liked and read a couple of reviews, many found it fantastic and a few thought the bread turned out a little too heavy. Having read these comments I wondered how I could vary the recipe to make it turn out perfect. (How big headed am I!!). So with a few changes this is how I did it.

Alex's Cornbread

1 1/4 Cup Corn meal

2 1/4 Cups Milk

1/2 Cup Canned Sweetcorn

1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar

A good squeeze of Honey

2 Eggs

1 Tbsp Baking Powder

1 Tsp Salt

Pinch of Turmeric

1/2 Cup Canola Oil

2 Cups All Purpose Flour

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl add the cornmeal and pour over the milk. Allow to sit for 5 minutes. In a separate bowl sift the flour, baking powder, turmeric, salt and sugar and whisk together. In a smaller bowl separate the eggs and lightly whisk the egg whites until frothy, then blend the yolks back into the whites. Fold the cornmeal mixture and eggs into the flour mixture until combined. Add a good squeeze of honey and the sweetcorn and mix in. Grease a loaf tin and pour in the batter. Bake for approx 40-50 minutes or until  a knife come out clean. Mine took about 50 minutes.

I made my corn bread more moist than what the original recipe called for as I used less cornmeal than the original recipe and it turned out lighter as I pre-whisked the eggs. Well that's what I thought anyway.

Monkey Bread

Ok, so I had envisaged posting lots of photos of my Christmas baking, but got so excited in the spirit of Christmas that I wrapped them all up. Duh !!! I also blame this on the fact that I have been ultra organised with Christmas preparations as we are off to Whistler for Christmas. Whoop whoop!!! My Christmas hamper is beginning to fill up slowly, the shortbread is wrapped and the mulled wine spices are prepared. At present there are two monkey breads in the oven, one is for the hamper and the second is possibly for works pot luck tomorrow, that's if I don't demolish it first.

Not all my Christmas baking has turned out as well as I had anticipated. I tried to make these cheese and rosemary crackers which were advertised in a wine magazine, they smelt great even before baking, but once baked they tasted awful. All I could taste was flour, they were quickly passed into the trash can. Blah!!! But I guess you never know until you try.

Anyway, back to my monkey bread. I use the same recipe for the dough as the cinnamon rolls. Once the dough has risen I pinch off little clumps and roll them into balls before coating them in butter and rolling them around in cinnamon sugar before throwing them into a cake pan. These little balls all get baked together (for around 20-30 mins or until the bread turns golden brown)  and the sugar turns into a sticky goo holding the pieces together. When its time to eat you just pull off the dough balls. mmm mmm. This is going to be our breakfast for Christmas day.

Having started to write this post one hour ago. I can now tell you that the second monkey bread will not be going to work, due to the fact that it didn't come out of the pan in one piece. I failed to line it with parchment!!! I did eventually get it loose from the pan but it does not look to esthetically pleasing, tastes good though. Hey ho, more for Ian and I.

The 2nd collapsed bread

Which is now being devoured

Narna Bread (Banana Bread)

I owe this recipe to my friend Carrie, she brought it to a picnic and everyone wanted the recipe. Thank you Carrie. Ever since I moved to Canada banana bread was everywhere and I can't get enough of it!! My mother used to make a fruit loaf with bran and even though this banana bread does not have any of the same ingredients, I feel like it is a modern version (I think mum would disagree). Banana bread is great to munch on when your feeling a little peckish. I decided to make it today on this very lazy Sunday as we had nothing to eat in the house. There was no milk for pancakes or bread for toast, there was however 3 battered and bruised bananas sitting in an ignored fruit bowl, so I took advantage.  It took me about 5 minutes to prepare the batter and the oven did the rest of the work in around 40 minutes, so my Sunday remained very lazy!!! I added a handful of chocolate chips to this banana bread, hence the blobs of chocolate shown in the photo.

Carrie's Banana Bread

1 1/4 cup of flour

2/3 cup of sugar

1/4 cup of oil

2 tablespoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

3 medium banana's

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a loaf pan. Add banana's to a mixing bowl and soften to mush. Add remaining ingredients and mix. Transfer batter to prepared pan and bake on the middle shelve for approx  40 minutes or until a knife blade comes out clean from the batter. Allow to cool slightly before removing from the loaf pan.


We polished off half the bread this afternoon and washed it down with two mugs of steaming hot fresh coffee. Mmm mmm.

Bread

I had been looking everywhere for a decent recipe for bread that could be made without a bread machine. I searched the internet, watched untold cooking programs and read copious amounts of magazine articles. Many of the recipes produced a lovely tasting bread but they were either too crusty or the bread laid heavy in your stomach. So, after trying various recipes I found the perfect bread dough, an Amish recipe. I have played around with the ingredients to get the taste I like. When I first made it, it was far too sweet and although it tasted good toasted, it didn't work for me as bread. I also added a mixture of white flour and wholemeal flour with the addition of some grains to make me feel like it was healthier!!! This bread has a nice soft texture with a light crust.

I have three reliable bread doughs in my recipe folder, pizza dough, Amish dough and sweet dough. The pizza dough can easily be made into foccacia with the addition of more water, the Amish dough can be made into a variety of savory breads and the sweet dough (which is used for my cinnamon rolls) can be made into a fruit loaf with the addition of dried fruit and orange peal. As long as you stick to the basics you can pretty much add anything to the dough.

This bread recipe is my adapted version.

Bread Dough

2 cups warm water (110 degrees)

3 Tbs white sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

6 cups bread flour  (half of white bread flour & half wholemeal)

1/4 cup mixed cereal grain

Using a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in the warm water. After the sugar is dissolved, stir in the yeast, and allow the mixture to proof until yeast resembles a creamy foam. Into the yeast mixture, add the salt and the oil. Gradually mix in the flour, only one cup at a time and the grains. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough until smooth and place in a well oiled bowl, turning the dough to coat. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and allow to rise until doubled in bulk. This usually takes about one hour. After the dough has finished rising, knead for a few minutes, and divide in half. If you have a scale, weigh out the pieces to ensure even baking. Shape each piece of dough into loaf shape, and place into two well oiled 9 by 5 inch loaf pans. Allow the dough to rise for thirty minutes to an hour, or until dough has risen about one inch above the pans. Bake the loaves at 350 degrees for about thirty minutes, until golden brown on top. Allow to cool and turn out of pans. Keep in a sealed plastic bag to keep fresh, thats if you don't eat it all!!!