Chuck's Pizza Base

There are a few chefs which I like to watch on the cable - Anna Olson, Laura Caulder and Chuck on Asian Food Channel, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri and Alton Brown on Food Network Asia. I would try to catch their recipe as they demonstrate, otherwise, I'll have to go to the website to search for it subsequently.

I managed to catch "Chuck's Day Off" on one of the Wednesday evening last year. I copied the recipe and tried it. Actually I didn't refer to his website before I did the pizza. Only to realised that I had missed out 1/2 cups of flour. No wonder my dough was so wet!! Nevertheless, the pizza turns out very nice. The crust was really crispy and if you like pan pizza, the bread is really soft.

Here is the recipe for his pizza base.

Recipe for Smoked Salmon Pizza, adapted from Chuck Hughes.
Makes 2 (12") large pizzas

Ingredients:
Pizza Dough Recipe
1 tbsp Olive oil (15g)
3/4 tbsp Instant yeast (12.5g)
1 tbsp Sugar (15g)
1 tbsp Salt (15g)
2 cups warm water (500ml)

4 1/2 cups Plain flour (1.125kg)

Toppings: (for one pizza)
125g Smoked Salmons
Onions
Ground Black Pepper
Wild Rockets
2 tbsp Mayonnaise
1 tbsp Honey

Method:

1. In a bowl combine all the ingredients except the flour. Let stand until the mixture starts to foam, for about 15 minutes.
2. Add the flour and knead until smooth, 5 minutes. Roll the dough in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours (or overnight).
3. Take the dough from the fridge and split in 2. Knead and roll each dough ball to the desired shape and thickness, on a floured surface.
4. Bake the dough at 200C for about 23 mins.
5. Remove from the oven, let it cool slightly.
6. Mix the mayonnaise with honey and spread it generously over the pizza top.
7. Arrange the smoked salmons on the pizza, topped with onions, wild rockets and sprinkle some ground black pepper.

I made this pizza twice. The second time was more successful.

Black Gold Pizza

[Backdated to early Sep.] During one of my off days, I decided to make pizza for our dinner. Wanting to make something special, I tried the black gold pizza from "Pockets of Happiness" by Chef Judy, owner of Creative Culinaire. The pizza turns out to be soft and nice. There was a slight hint of charcoal taste on the palate after eating. Nice for a change.

Recipe for Black Gold Pizzas, modified from "Pockets of Happiness" by Judy Koh.
Makes two 9" Pizzas

Ingredients:
190g Plain flour
60g Bread flour
50g Wholemeal flour
8g Charcoal powder
4g Instant yeast
4g Sea salt
4g Fine sugar
180g Water
20g Olive oil

For topping: (you may add anything you like)
2 tbsp Olive oil
2 tbsp mayonnaise
20 slices of Cheddar cheese (half should suffice. My children like it cheesy!)
1 punnet Cherry tomatoes, sliced half
1 punnet White button mushrooms (using this will cause the pizza to be watery. Avoid this if you like it dry and cheesy. Mine turned creamy, but we liked it! :p)
Some fresh dills

Method:

1. Knead all the ingredients for the dough together in a mixer till a smooth and developed dough is formed.
2. Round the dough, cover and allow it to ferment for about 1 hour before punching the dough down and stretching it to fit into a 9" pizza pan.
3. Brush the surface with olive oil, spread the mayonnaise on it and arrange the cheese, tomatoes and mushrooms nicely.
4. Topped them up with the remaining cheese.
5. Proof for another 15mins before baking in a preheated oven at 200C for about 15mins or until cooked.

Pizza bread and more...

When I saw Shirley's post on the "Yukone" method on bread making, I told myself I had to try this! I knew of this method, but usually, it's the water roux method where cooking of flour is required. Actually, I've wanted to attend Valerie Kong's bread workshops since last year after I saw Wendy's post. However, several times, the timing and venue wasn't quite right for me. And now, she started teaching at Shermay. I found the price too costly! I'm still waiting, and hoping, that she will go back to CC to teach breads.


Anyway, back to Shirley's recipe. I was truly tempted by this roux method. Since she mentioned that any kind of flour can be used, I decided to use my wholemeal flour. Then, while I was pouring the hot water into the wholemeal flour, I accidentally poured more than required! Oops! Fortunately, very fortunately, the buns turned out to be truly soft and fluffy! This is truly the kind of breads I like! After one day, it was still fluffy, but not as soft as I suspect I have overbaked it! However, it was still softer than those I made previously without using the water roux method! The pizza bread stayed soft even on the third day! I made these before I left for my Malaysia trip.

Here is how I made them. I made doubled the recipe.

Recipe for Pizza Bread and Pork floss Sausage Buns, extracted from Kokken69.
Makes a 9" Pizza Bread and 16 Mini Sausage Buns


Water Roux
100g Wholemeal flour
150g Boiling water (I added a total of 180g instead. It still works!)

Bread Dough
320g Bread flour
80g Plain flour
11g Instant yeast (1 pkt)
100g Fine sugar
4g Fine salt
2 nos. Whole eggs (Approx. 96g)
90g Water (I added less here because I added too much at the water roux)

Fillings
1 pkt Mini cocktail sausage
40g Mixed vegetables
1 tbsp Tomato ketchup + 1 tbsp Maggi Sweet Chilli sauce
Shredded Cheddar cheese (up to your likings)

Method :

1. Mix water roux ingredients together in a bowl. Cover bowl with cling wrap and store in fridge for 12 hours.
2. In a mixer fitted with a dough hook, add all the ingredients except butter and water roux. Start mixing at slow speed. Then increase to medium speed and continue kneading until dough lifts from the wall of the mixing bowl. 
3. Add the water roux  and continue to knead for 3 mins at low speed.
4. Add butter and increasing kneading speed to medium.
5. Continue kneading for 15 mins on medium speed until dough is no longer sticky and does not break when pulled to perform window test. 
6. Cover with cling wrap and leave to proof in a warm area for 45mins.
7. With lightly floured hands and table top, knead (6) to form a smooth round ball.
8. Divide the big dough into thirds - one third is for the pizza dough. The remaining two thirds is to equally divide into 16 pcs.
9. Roll each dough into a round ball and leave to proof for 10mins.
10. Flatten each ball and roll out to a circle with a rolling pin. Place the mini sausage into each of the small 16 doughs, wrap and seal the edges of the dough to form a ball.
11. Flatten the bigger dough and let it rest in a pizza pan.
12. Leave to proof for 1 hour.
13. Brush the sausage doughs with milk. Bake it in a pre-heated oven at 185C for 8-10mins until brown.
14. Slightly flatten the centre of the pizza dough. Spread the tomato and chilli sauce evenly on the dough. Place the mixed vegetables evenly on top of the sauces. Then add sausage slices on it. Topped up with shredded cheddar cheese.
15. Bake it at 185C for about 18mins until slightly brown.
16. Leave to cool.
17. For the sausage bread, spread some mayo on top, then rolled them on pork floss to coat.

I'm submitting this to the Apiring Bakers #8 - Bread Seduction, hosted by The Sweetylicious.

Jane's Pizzeria

Don't be mistaken. It's not another post on food review. This time, I made pizzas from my home kitchen. My parents and siblings missed my pizzas. So I invited them over to my place for pizza on one of the Saturday two weeks back. However, I found that I have overbaked them, therefore, making them slightly hard. Nevertheless my family still took them, and finished them all! So supportive!

Whenever I entertain at home, whether it's family members or friends, I like to plan in totality. From drinks to starters to main course to desserts. Therefore, on a Saturday evening, I prepared a four-course meal and a drink.

I like to start off the meal with some refreshing drinks. That will be ice-cold lemongrass drink. Boil a few bulbs of chopped and mashed lemongrass in a pot of water. Add sugar to taste. Refridgerate till chilly cold, then serve. Add ice if required.

Salad was prepared by my helper. Ever since I saw HHB in sharing her salad dressing, I've been using that for my salad now. A whole lot of ingredients were used to prepare a wholesome salad: coral lettuce, royal lettuce, cherry tomatoes, yellow & green capsicums, onions, raisins, olives, button mushrooms and almond flakes with olive oil, lemon juice, rock salt and black pepper.

As I bought quite a lot of tomatoes from the supermarket lately, I decided to make tomato basil soup. The verdict? It was really good according to my family members. This is something new which they have not tried from my kitchen before though.

The main course for the evening was Assorted Pizzas. I baked the pizza base first, then add the toppings.

Chicken Pizza. Shredded chicken, yellow & green capsicums, onions, button mushrooms and mozzarella cheese. Baked to melt the cheese.

Wasabi Mayo Salmon Pizza. Flaked salmon, onions, capsicums and wasabi mayo. The mixing ratio for mayo and wasabi is approximately 3:1.

Smoked Salmon Pizza. This was prepared by my sister, who sponsored the smoked salmon. Mayo and dill were mixed and spread on the baked pizza base. Followed by smoked salmon, ring onions and olives. Dill and black pepper were sprinkled on it. This is my all-time favourite! Yummy!

Prawns and Chicken Pizza. Prawns, shredded chicken, capsicums, olives, onions, button mushrooms, pineapples, and cheese. Baked to melt the cheese.

After dinner, we rested for a while before I served my dessert. Dessert of the day was dark chocolate tarts. I had one which I added liquer cherry in it. When you bite onto the cherry, the liquer oozed out from it made it feel so shiok! One of my favourite way of eating it!

You can tell from the amount of food that my family sure loves good foods. Next round, I'll be wondering what to make... Jane's kopi-tiam style?

Wholesome Wholemeal Pizzas

Being ill at home is no joy, and to be socially responsible, I can't step out of my house! :(
So, I had to rest and drink more water, rest and drink more water!

Feeling slightly better, and just don't want to laze around too much, I decided to make dinner for the family today. Even though I knew that I don't have enough ingredients for pizzas, I still decided on pizzas. Having learnt that there is a wholemeal version of the pizza from Grace previously, I decided to try it. I also tried my hand at making the pizza paste from scratch, with some reference from here.

Here is sharing how I made the Wholesome wholemeal pizzas.

Wholemeal Pizza Base Recipe, modified from Kitchen Corner.

Ingredients
100g Bread flour
100g Wholemeal flour
10g Caster sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2tsp Instant dry yeast
110g Water.
10g Olive oil

Method:
1. Mix all the ingredients together, except olive oil.
2. Knead until they become a crumbly consistency, then add in 10g olive oil.
3. Continue to knead until smooth springy soft dough.
4. Cover it with cling film and let it rest for 1 hour.
5. Divide the dough up into two equal portion let them rest for 15 minutes.
6. Roll out the doughs onto two round greased pans.
7. Then spread the pizza sauce onto the pizza dough then sprinkle with some freshly grated cheddar cheese and mozzarella cheese.
8. Add your toppings and sprinkle again with mozzarella cheese.
9. Bake the pizza at the lowest rack in the oven at 220C preheated oven for 10 minutes.
10. Then reduce the temperature to 190C and transfer to the centre rack and continue baking for another 10mins.

Pizza Paste Recipe
Ingredients:
7 medium Tomatoes, cut
A few cloves of garlic, cut
Fresh basil leaves
Some olive oil

 Methods:
1. Heat the olive oil in a tall saucepan, then add the garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
2. Do not allow the garlic to brown. Add the tomatoes and basil leaves and bring to a boil.

3. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid cooks out.
4. When there is still some liquid left in the pan, carefully puree the sauce using a hand-held blender.
5. Bring it back to a boil, and continue simmering until desired consistency.

6. Let it cool, sieved out the tomatoes (if there is still too much water), then spread on pizza dough.

Pizza Toppings
Pizza 1:
Minced meat and spinach

Pizza 2:
1 can of tuna, 1 small red onion and spinach

I love my tomatoes with lots of basil leaves. Ever since I started using basil leaves for my salads, I've fallen in love with (sweet) basil leaves, truly truly in love! I'm so glad my family love the pizzas. Maybe they were hungry?

A New Attempt

It was another day of "busyness" in the kitchen. My best companion has its mood swings at certain time. He is none other than my Delonghi! He was hot at 190C sometimes or at 100C. Either mad in the head, or mad in the heart. He "sees" red most of the time while I tried to monitor his temperature with the oven thermometer. Heehee...Okay, back to what I bake today.

Purple Sweet Potato Chiffon Cake
This was a TOTAL FLOP (even though the colour was really attractive!!) The end result was exactly like my Mango Chiffon Cake two days ago. I don't know what went wrong, but the smell and taste of the cake was really nice. Another recipe from Kevin Chai. Is it him, or is it me?? :p

Pizzas, baked pastas & Garlic breads with Rosemary
Five pizzas with different toppings: Teriyaki Salmon, Teriyaki Prawns, Minced Pork with Black Bean Paste, Bacons & Mushrooms. Baked pastas with mixed herbs and garlic breads with fresh rosemary herbs.


Intense Chocolate Souffle
This was requested by my sister. She wanted souffle for dessert tonight. So I tried to surf the web for a good recipe. I've not tried this before. It's a new attempt! Since my younger sister just bought the Ghirardelli chocs for me, I managed to find one recipe from that site: Intense Dark Souffles. I halved the recipe. I was quite reluctant to use up the whole packet of the chocolates since I only have one packet. So I saved half for myself! ;)

On a separate note, I bought the purple sweet potato last Saturday. So I told my helper to add it to the porridge to cook (like normal sweet potato). Finally, we had purple porridge for lunch. The sweet potatoes were really sweet and nice. Makes the porridge so yummy!

Celebrations Weekend!

It was a celebrations' weekend for me. Saturday, my parents & siblings came to my place for a pizza dinner, and celebrate Singapore's 43rd National Day. Sunday, will be another celebration, my dad's 65th birthday!

Here are the food I prepared for Saturday. Will try to post up the recipes later. Meanwhile, enjoy the photos! :)

Baked Rice & Pizzas

Baked rice recipe extracted from Happy Home Baking.

Mango & Passionfruit Cake

Recipe for the Traditional Sponge Cake extracted from Alex Goh's "Creative Making of Cakes".
Ingredients:
(A): 5 Eggs, 150g Sugar
(B): 120g Cake flour
(C): 80g Melted butter

Method:
1. Put (A) in the mixing bowl.
2. Whip (A) till light and fluffy.
3. Fold in (B) and mix till well blended.
4. Stir in (C) and mix until well incorporated.
5. Pour batter into a 8" round mould. Bake at 180C for 30 minutes.
6. Remove it from the mould immediately when baked.

My Saturday Dinner

I planned my Saturday dinner since Thursday, inviting my parents and sisters over to my place for dinner. Partly is because want to relieve my mum from cooking every Saturday, secondly was because I felt like making pizzas as I still have bacons left in the fridge. :p
So my menu for Saturday was:
Appetizers - Lobster Bisque & Vol-au-vent.
Main - Pizzas (& leftover Fried Bee Hoon from lunch)
Dessert - Strawberry Mille Feuille.

This is what I made for dinner.

Preparing the lobsters to be steamed. Bought these on Friday evening at Giant.

Lobsters were shy after steaming. :p The before and after.

Made egg mayo for my Vol-au-vents.

Specially for my children - Chao Shao Pizza!

This is for me actually - Spicy Bak Kwa Pizza!

This is bacon & sausages pizza.

Similar to the previous one, except without olives. I baked a total of 7 pizzas! But we only finished 5 in total.

Finally, it's dessert. These are called Mille Feuille. I used strawberries, whipped cream & choc ganache.

Cross section of my Strawberry Mille Feuille.

I was so tired after preparing for the whole day! But I'm happy that my family enjoyed it and appreciate it. I don't mind doing it every week too! ;)