Baking frenzy

Well not exactly a frenzy, but the oven got well used last weekend! If you’re here after reading yesterday’s post, thank you for coming back! Let me share a couple of recipes with you. The first one is fool proof, and won’t disappoint. Easy peasy. It’s pizza dough. I found it a few years ago, unfortunately I can’t remember where from, but it’s absolutely brilliant. You’ll never buy a ready made mix packet again. The list of ingredients may be a little long, but don’t be put off, you just end up mixing it all together in a bowl, there’s nothing more to it! So here we go:

• 650g 00 flour (this is very fine flour, I’ve found it in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in the past, so it shouldn’t be hard to come by)
• a 7g packet of dry yeast
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil or vegetable oil
• 50ml of warm milk
• 325ml of warm water

Mix the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add the oil, milk and water and mix thoroughly until you get a soft dough. This shouldn’t take too long (5 minutes). Try to make a kneading action as you mix. Form into a nice ball in your bowl, cover with cling film for about 1.5-2hours until doubled in size. You can then tear off the amount you need and freeze the rest.

When I made it on Sunday, I divided it into four. This makes four generous sized pizzas to feed two hungry people each. When you need a batch that’s frozen, just take it out of the freezer the night before and leave out until you need it (it’ll be easier to roll out if it’s slightly warm). I’m afraid I don’t have any photos for this though, it was just too yummy and I wasn’t quick enough with the camera! We had it with tomato paste spread as a base, followed by slices of fresh tomatoes, smoked mozzarella (first time I’d had this – it’s AMAZING!!!) and mushrooms, with a drizzle of olive oil, a good sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper and some torn basil leaves. Yum-my!!!!

The other thing I baked was a version of this, a banana, white chocolate and raspberry cake. At first I was a little taken aback by Maria’s recipe, as it uses cups, which I am not familiar with. But I worked around it, and here’s what I used in good old grams:

• 250g plain flour
• 110g soft butter
• 110g brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 50ml milk
• 2 mashed bananas
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 200g raspberries
• small bag of white chocolate chips (2 handfuls should do)
  

Preheat oven to 170˚C and line a loaf tin with baking parchment. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat well. Add the bananas and milk and mix. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the creamed mix. Mix in the raspberries and chocolate chips. Pour the mix into the tin. Bake for about 1hour and 10min, or until a skewer comes out clean.

I thought this turned out lovely! Using up raspberries from the pick your own that I’d frozen was really nice too! I guess this might be nice with blackberries too, or whatever else you’ve got at the moment! xx