2 RED PIZZAS! WITH SMOKED PAPRIKA - vegan

A friend of mine recently gave me a jar of smoked paprika - and I've been doing a bit of experimenting with it.

I made some pasta with the s/paprika in the dough - which gave it a lovely flavour and looked pretty amazing, too! 

Yesterday being Saturday it was pizzas for dinner - but the weather was far too wet to use the chiminea, so I had to use the oven. 

Judging by the pasta, in which I'd used 3/4 teaspoon of smoked paprika to 50g of flour, I decided I needed 3 teaspoons for the 200g of flour I was using for the pizzas - and once again, it gave the dough a lovely colour:

The topping was some leftover chilli, mashed a little, with mushrooms, tomatoes, nooch and dried basil

PIZZA - with a soda bread crust

Makes two 30cm (12") pizzas. Ready in a jiffy, and very economical, costing less than £1 each.  

Ingredients:

400g (or 2 mugs) self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

250ml (or 2/3rds mug) water

2 tablespoons olive oil (optional)

Topping:

½ tube tomato puree thinned out with hot water into a passata-type sauce

1/2 tsp mixed herbs) (optional)

1/2 stock cube (optional)

2 heaped dessertspoons nutritional yeast, or:
100g vegan cheese (Eg. Smoked Applewood)
Plus sliced mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers

Method:

1.     Since the baking powder begins working as soon as it comes into contact with the water, you need to have everything ready before mixing the dough. So, heat the oven to 220C, 425F, gas mark 7 and either grease two baking sheets or line them with baking parchment.

2.     Place the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl, add the water, then the olive oil (if using) and begin mixing together into a dough, bringing the flour from the sides to the middle. Don't be too gentle, and work fairly fast. The dough should be soft and squishy, so don't be afraid to add more water to keep it soft.

3.     Once the dough is formed, give the mixing bowl a final wipe and turn it out onto your worktop, knead it firmly several times, then mould it into a cob shape. Working quickly, divide the dough into two and, with a rolling pin and plenty of flour, roll each one out into a large circle to fit your trays. (With practice you can get the mixing and shaping done in two or three minutes.)

4.     Divide the sauce between the pizzas, spreading it not quite up to the edges - leave about a centimetre gap - and smoothing it out evenly. Sprinkle with cheese.

5.     Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes, but check after ten – you may need to swap shelves, or turn the pizzas around to cook evenly. When they're done the pizzas will lift up all along one side when you check underneath, using a bread knife or similar. The bottom should be browning from the edges.

Notes:

The topping I've given is just a suggestion - use your own favourite toppings, and get the family to join in with their own favourites. 

About using soda bread in this way: 

I've been making my own bread for almost 40 years, and pizzas for most of this time - but I've only recently discovered this variation, and it really is a revelation! 

If I'm using s-d tomatoes, I'll add about 25g of the oil they have been soaked in to the dough instead of olive oil. This enhances the crust and gives it almost a shortcrust pastry-type feel.

HAGGIS EN CROUTE, USING BRIOCHE - WITH OLIVE OR SUNFLOWER OIL

For Christmas dinner this year I quite fancied homemade vegan haggis  - en croute. Reading about the en croute method in general I discovered that a brioche dough is quite traditional when making a beef Wellington, so this was what I wanted.

As a vegan, brioche made with butter and eggs has been out of the question up until now. But I'd recently come across this post on The Fresh Loaf forum, so I knew a vegan brioche was quite doable. However, this was to be a savoury wrap, which I wanted to make it as tasty as I possibly could - I just used the recipe as a base.

For the last couple of years I've added chopped sun dried tomatoes whenever I've made pizza dough - and I've always included a good glug of the oil from the jar. This makes a wonderfully crisp, crumbly crust - almost like shortcrust pastry. So I decided to use the same oil - which was mostly sunflower oil, with a little olive oil - for the brioche dough.

The procedure for any brioche is to make the dough first, then, once the gluten has formed, knead in whatever fat you are using. 


Here's the dough I made:
160g white bread flour
1 stock cube, crumbled
1 rounded teaspoon of curry powder
1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs
4 s-d-tomatoes chopped small

Yeast liquid made with:
10g fresh yeast
20g tomato puree
70g lukewarm water

Plus:
1 dessertspoon vegan pesto
25g extra virgin olive oil (I probably didn't need this!)

Mixed into a dough and kneaded until smooth.

Then 80g of the oil from the jar of s-d-tomatoes was poured into the bowl and incorporated into the dough - with difficulty, I have to say. After a couple of minutes squeezing and turning repeatedly, it was pretty ragged and I began to think I'd used too much oil. But I persevered and suddenly it became like a ciabatta dough - neither a batter or a dough, but somewhere in between. At this stage I added a further 25g of flour and, after a bit more kneading and squishing (to use the technical term! :) ), I brought it onto the worktop and I was able to begin rolling it out. It was a very wet dough and after a couple of attempts I realised I'd be better rolling it out on some baking parchment, which was what I did. Flouring it liberally, I managed to get it to the size I required, covered the dough with thinly sliced mushrooms

and gently folded the dough over the haggis. 

First two folds, using the baking parchment to lift the dough over the haggis

All is safely gathered in!

Normally I would hack away with a pair of scissors at this stage, to get the least amount of dough to haggis ratio I could. Not this time. I was just happy I had the haggis enclosed!

And here it is, after 20 minutes at 200C

Divided in two, half for dinner tomorrow, the rest went in the freezer

This is what I wrote at the time (1.30 on Christmas morning) on one of the food forums I use:

"My haggis en croute has just come out of the oven and I've had a taste of the crust - it is absolutely gorgeous! No, glorious is a better word!"

The next morning I nibbled the crust constantly - I found it irresistible!

I'm happy to report that my Christmas dinner was absolutely lovely - with a spicy tomato sauce and all the traditional roast veggies, I was very happy indeed!

And I've got the other half of this bread in the freezer - perhaps for New Year's dinner?