Yeast Breads | Chickens in the Road

Posts Tagged ‘yeast breads’

Jun
15

I love pizza! But first of all, there is no pizza delivery in the country. There’s takeout pizza at the little store in town, but with three hungry children (two of them being teenage boys), that can get pretty expensive. And seeing as how it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the little store in town, and another 20 minutes to get back, I might as well make it at home.

Homemade pizza is actually a great busy-day dinner. You can shortcut the sauce, either with some Basic Italian-Style Tomato Sauce you might have onhand, or with a jar of storebought sauce. Shortcut the cheese by keeping some pre-shredded mozzarella onhand, too. All it takes after that is slicing up your toppings. The pizza bread itself? That’s the last place you should cut corners because it’s the very foundation of your pizza. Great pizza bread makes great pizza. And you can make great pizza bread in one hour, from starting the dough to sliding the prepared pizza into the oven with this easy pizza dough–another variation on my Hot, Crusty French Bread recipe. (And it’s so easy, even my 12-year-old can make her own pizza!)

*The following recipe makes one pizza if using 16-inch pizza pans. Double, triple, quadruple recipe as needed. If I’m baking four pizzas, I use two bowls and do a double recipe in each bowl.

How to Make Pizza Dough:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 package yeast
1 cup warm water
salt to taste (I use 3/4 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a large bowl, combine water with yeast, salt, and olive oil. Let sit for five minutes before beginning to add the flour.

Stir in flour until the dough is stiff enough to knead. Add flour a little at a time. Three cups of flour is approximate; exact amount may vary slightly. Knead dough until smooth and elastic–-just a few minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl; cover. Let rise until doubled. (Using rapid-rise yeast, unless your house is very cold, the rise time should be approximately 30 minutes.)

After dough has risen, roll out directly onto a greased pizza pan, sprinkling flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking.

I like to use a small plastic cup to roll out pizza dough instead of a rolling pin because the smaller size is easier to manage with the raised edges of a pizza pan.

Before adding any sauce and toppings, bake pizza bread at 400-degrees for about 8 minutes. Take out pizza bread. Add sauce and toppings as desired. Put completed pizza back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. If I’m baking two at a time, halfway into the baking time I switch the pizzas on the oven racks.

For dessert pizza, use melted butter and a mix of sugar and cinnamon, or add fruit!

Another of my favorite ways to fix pizza is to skip the sauce entirely. I sprinkle olive oil on top of the prepared, pre-baked pizza bread (in place of sauce) then add my toppings. One of my favorite combos when making pizza this way is Swiss cheese, crumbled bacon, and onions and/or peppers. Yum! How about you? What’s your favorite pizza?

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Posted by Suzanne McMinn | Permalink

Tags: pizza, yeast breads

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May
14

There’s always more to do with Grandmother Bread! Try Apple-Streudel Ladder Loaf–for dessert, for breakfast, or just a snack. Or lunch while the kids are at school eating hamburger casserole and peas. I won’t tell. Start with the Grandmother Bread.

How to make Apple-Streudel Ladder Loaf:

Start with the one-loaf standard Grandmother Bread recipe

1 1/2 cups warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
4-5 cups flour

In a large bowl, combine water, yeast, sugar, and salt. Let sit five minutes. Stir in flour with a heavy spoon until dough becomes too stiff to continue stirring easily. Add a little more flour and begin kneading. The amount of flour is approximate–your mileage may vary! Continue adding flour and kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic. Let dough rise in a greased, covered bowl until doubled. (Usually, 30-60 minutes.) Uncover bowl; sprinkle in a little more flour and knead again.

Filling

2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped, peeled apples

Roll dough into an 8×12-inch rectangle on a floured surface. Brush melted butter over dough. Combine brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and apples for filling. Spread filling down the middle of the dough. At the sides of the filling, cut the dough at 1-inch intervals.

Fold dough strips over the filling to wrap, alternating strips to make a braid. See how pretty that’s going to be?

Carefully move filled loaf to a greased baking sheet. Brush top with more melted butter; sprinkle with sugar. And more sugar. And some cinnamon-sugar. Let rise till doubled. If you start a two-loaf recipe of Grandmother Bread, you might be making a regular loaf of bread at the same time.

Bake at 350-degrees for 30 minutes. Serve warm slices with ice cream.