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So, you know when you buy a beer kit (for those of us who started with those) and you remove the lid there's that packet of no-name brand yeast in there? And you know how everyone says "THROW IT AWAY IT'S TERRIBLE" and they're perfectly correct when talking about making beer with it? Well, I have a problem. I can't throw shit away. So I've been storing those little packets and had an idea over the weekend. It's yeast, right?
So I Googled a "basic pizza dough" recipe, and found one. It calls for bakers yeast, but hey, yeast is yeast, right? Anyway, the recipe was super simple - 190ml warm water, 2 cups flour, teaspoon of salt and yeast. So I had at it.
Sprinkled the yeast from the fridge (ice cold) directly onto the warm water. SACRILEGE the poor yeasties! Well, screw 'em. They would have ended up in the trash otherwise anyway. Stirred it into the water to just get all the clumps out. Smell was awesome, as always.
In a mixing bowl I simply sifted 2 cups of normal "cake flour" and the teaspoon of salt, poured in the yeast-water and mixed it with a spoon until it got all sticky. Then I floured up my hands a bit and kneaded it into a dough ball, about the size of a baseball. It took about 10 minutes of kneading, occasionally flouring my hands to keep it from sticking too bad to get it to a nice and springy dough ball.
According to the recipe you should let it rise for about 30 minutes or so, and then move it to the fridge. You can store it (covered) in the fridge apparently for up to 3 days. Well I let it stand for about 45 minutes, and then chilled it. The dough started rising immediately, within 10 minutes it was swelling up well. I had it in the fridge for a few hours and then my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to make a homemade pizza.
So I cut up two onions, added them in a small saucepan and added some sugar. This was sauteed and then eventually fried until deep golden, and sweet. Then I added a bunch of chopped up smoked vienna sausages and cooked this for about 15 minutes. This is usually something I then add to pasta with some oregano and cheese, but I figured it would do good on a pizza as well.
The dough was rolled out onto a baking tray. It filled out a normal sized baking tray nicely. Pizza wasn't round, but rolled out to thin, about 4mm thick. I then spread some sweet chilli sauce and some peach chutney on the base, spread the onion and vienna mix all over the base and covered it with a thin layer of cheese. This went into a pre-heated oven at 200°C for about 15 minutes.
My dudes.
The result was a pizza that tastes a lot like the Roman's Tangy Russian pizza. The base was perfectly cooked, golden brown on the bottom and nicely risen to about 8mm under the toppings, and around 1cm on the edges. Soft and fluffy on the inside, and nice and chewy on the underside and edges. I would HIGHLY recommend this, any day of the week.
This coming weekend I'm baking a bread using this method, but I'm going to tweak it a bit. Instead of water I'm going to use some of my latest Vienna lager, and I'm going to be adding cheese to the dough before baking a bread with it. Yes boi!
Sorry, no pics. It was too good to wait. I'll take some pics of the next batch, I promise, but in the meantime, I would highly recommend you start saving those yeast packages!
So I Googled a "basic pizza dough" recipe, and found one. It calls for bakers yeast, but hey, yeast is yeast, right? Anyway, the recipe was super simple - 190ml warm water, 2 cups flour, teaspoon of salt and yeast. So I had at it.
Sprinkled the yeast from the fridge (ice cold) directly onto the warm water. SACRILEGE the poor yeasties! Well, screw 'em. They would have ended up in the trash otherwise anyway. Stirred it into the water to just get all the clumps out. Smell was awesome, as always.
In a mixing bowl I simply sifted 2 cups of normal "cake flour" and the teaspoon of salt, poured in the yeast-water and mixed it with a spoon until it got all sticky. Then I floured up my hands a bit and kneaded it into a dough ball, about the size of a baseball. It took about 10 minutes of kneading, occasionally flouring my hands to keep it from sticking too bad to get it to a nice and springy dough ball.
According to the recipe you should let it rise for about 30 minutes or so, and then move it to the fridge. You can store it (covered) in the fridge apparently for up to 3 days. Well I let it stand for about 45 minutes, and then chilled it. The dough started rising immediately, within 10 minutes it was swelling up well. I had it in the fridge for a few hours and then my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to make a homemade pizza.
So I cut up two onions, added them in a small saucepan and added some sugar. This was sauteed and then eventually fried until deep golden, and sweet. Then I added a bunch of chopped up smoked vienna sausages and cooked this for about 15 minutes. This is usually something I then add to pasta with some oregano and cheese, but I figured it would do good on a pizza as well.
The dough was rolled out onto a baking tray. It filled out a normal sized baking tray nicely. Pizza wasn't round, but rolled out to thin, about 4mm thick. I then spread some sweet chilli sauce and some peach chutney on the base, spread the onion and vienna mix all over the base and covered it with a thin layer of cheese. This went into a pre-heated oven at 200°C for about 15 minutes.
My dudes.
The result was a pizza that tastes a lot like the Roman's Tangy Russian pizza. The base was perfectly cooked, golden brown on the bottom and nicely risen to about 8mm under the toppings, and around 1cm on the edges. Soft and fluffy on the inside, and nice and chewy on the underside and edges. I would HIGHLY recommend this, any day of the week.
This coming weekend I'm baking a bread using this method, but I'm going to tweak it a bit. Instead of water I'm going to use some of my latest Vienna lager, and I'm going to be adding cheese to the dough before baking a bread with it. Yes boi!
Sorry, no pics. It was too good to wait. I'll take some pics of the next batch, I promise, but in the meantime, I would highly recommend you start saving those yeast packages!
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