The Perfect Beginning

.. is waking up to breakfast pizza with ham, cheese and eggs :)

No excessive kneading, no waiting time for the yeast to react. It's simple, easy peazy lemon squeeshie.

 I made two breakfast pizzas using a single thin pizza dough recipe, tried and tested, and never disappoints.

Thin pizza dough
Ingredients:
* 1 3/4 c bread flour
* 1/4 tsp salt
* 1 packet (8g) bread yeast
* 1/2 tsp sugar
* 3/4 hot water (110 C)

How to:
* Preheat oven to 200 C.

* Proofing the yeast:  mix hot water with yeast & sugar. Let it sit for 8 mins.

* In a large bowl, whisk the bread flour & salt together. Create a well, pour in the yeast mixture.

* Using your hand, knead 1-2 min. Turn the dough onto floured surface, knead another 2 mins.

* Flatten over parchment paper, add in your toppings and bake for 8-10 mins. Voila! :)

As toppings, I used:
[First pizza on the top] edam cheese, red leicester cheese, feta cheese, ham, egg. Sprinkled with salt, pepper, spring onions and thinly sliced shallots.

[Second pizza on the top, the picture above] diced left over roast chicken thigh, red leicester cheese, feta cheese, salt, hot paprika pepper, chopped dill and cilantro.

Pesto Pizza

In case you don't know yet, Africa is running on generator most of the time.
I'd say Angola is lower, probably about 70% of the time.
Many offices of large enterprises actually rely on generator 24x7. They can't afford to have electricity cut off that happens every so often. It is not unusual to have a power cut two to three times a day.
On weekends, one can expect the generator to run from Friday night up till Monday morning.

So when we heard our generator's pump is spoilt, we know doomsday can't be any closer. 

And as expected, our frozen food is rapidly thawing, including my precious pesto sauce.
So once I got back into my kitchen after evacuating to another guest house, I thought why don't we do pesto pizza for once. Just to know how it tastes. 

I've seen many version of flat bread with pesto, so why not with pizza?

I first prepared the minced beef, sauteing with onions, carrots & mushroom. 

Peppered with cloves, nutmeg, salt & black pepper. 

Hmm... a little bit too dry.

Add in the shredded cheese (I used emmental)

And a glug of olive oil

Into the oven, 175 C for about 10 mins.

And lunch is ready. 

Verdict: I'm not sure that pesto makes a good base. It's too dry for our liking. 

To use pesto as a base, I think one would need a creamy cheese like gorgonzola. Even camembert will be helpful (Ha! baked camembert :))

I am not sure I'd do this again. 

Maybe I will just keep the pesto for pasta. 

Or  baked chicken breast meat :) whaddaya say? ;) 

Avocado Pizza with the ultimate pizza dough

Over the weekend, I tried a new recipe off Sweet Paul Magazine Fall 2011. Pizza with caramelized onion, gorgonzola & avocado.

I didn't manage to find gorgonzola, so I used Cheddar instead, same quantity.

Verdict:
I am disappointed that the pizza didn't live up to its wonderful promises, but I should have known this. Gorgonzola is probably the creamiest cheese, so substituting with cheddar is stupid. My bad. A bit on the dry side, needed a lot more salt, pepper & olive oil. The pizza was a bit too thick for a single serving - I would turn it into 1 large thin pizza and 1 medium thin pizza.

However, I have to say the pizza dough is the best. I have found the ultimate winning recipe. So please make way and do try this at home:

The Ultimate Pizza dough
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 tbsp dry yeast (I used boulangerie yeast)
- 2.5 cup flour (I used white bread flour)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil

How to:
* Mix water, honey and yeast. Leave it to rest (proof) it around 5 mins.

* Add the remaining ingredients, shift the flour. Knead well.

* Cover with cling wrap, put in warm spot (I usually put it in my oven, at 50 celcius). Let it rise for 1 hour.

* After it raise, flatten it and move it into your pizza tray/ oven tray to make it a large pizza. For me, it would make 1 large + 1 medium pizza.

And the rest.. is your story. Put some topping and pop it into the oven 200 celcius. Bake till brown or till you grow impatient, whichever comes first. Bon chance! 


Me? I'm going to make some flammekuchen this wednesday, I have never tried a cream-base pizza before. Wish me luck.