Last night we made the Syrian-style pizzas I've mentioned in a previous post. They were really delicious, but not without some problems. The pizza dough is the easiest I've ever made - throw the dry ingredients in a mixer with a dough-hook (we have an 700 year old Kenwood that still runs like a steam-engine), with two teaspoons of olive oil and slowly add the water as it's mixing on the slowest setting, then let it run for ten minutes.
This is where the problem occurred. The dough was about three-and-a-half cups of flour, and 420ml of water. Now, I'm still a novice baker, but that amount of water got my spider-senses twitching. I added about 370ml in the end and that was still too much - a pizza dough should be a lot looser than your average bread dough (and should only get a single prove, to maintain that elasticity), but this was almost runny and difficult as all hell to work with, sticking to everything it came in contact with, including the oiled baking sheet and damp tea towel covering it while it proved (next time I'll use cling-wrap sprayed with oil).
I made the full amount of dough, divvied it up into four roughly equal portions and let it prove for two hours, as per the recipe. When I came back to it the dough portions had spread back into one homogeneous spread of really sticky dough, and when I tried to cut it apart with my old blunt chef's knife I keep just for working with dough, it stuck to the baking sheet, the knife my fingers and anything else it touched (again). Eventually I managed to work it on a well-floured board, and eventually my managed to stop laughing.
In spite of this, the dough made one of the best pizza bases I've ever tried. Next time we make these Ill take a photo and post it. Lamb and cinnamon are magic when combined, and the tomato topping on the base actually added to the overall taste rather than fighting with the other flavours. Definitely a recipe for the repertoire.
2 months ago
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