Flat breads first.
Tuesday we concentrated on unleaved flat breads, starting with chipati's. =)
These are very simple to make, & take no time at all to bake! Just a couple of minutes on the first side, then half that time for the second.
We also made roomali's, another type of Indian flatbread, also called a handkerchief bread because of the way they're folded up. These were exceptionally thin, & once baked, were brushed with melted butter & folded up =)
Wayne mentione that they were nice sprinkled with sugar, & that was it! Out came the vanilla, cinnamon & cardamon flavoured sugars & many more sweet roomali's were made. We ate quite a few of these in the end =D
Then there was a Nordic potato flatbread, called lefse. These were very tasty, & apparently they're eaten for breakfast, either brushed with melted butter & sprinkled with sugar, or topped with pickle fish, & then rolled up like a pancake.
We didn't have any pickled fish to hand, so we had them with sugar instead =D
Today we made pitta breads, naan breads, pizzas & Chicago pizza pies!
The pitta breads were very simple to make, & came out lovely, & again they took just a couple of minutes to bake.
Pizza was up next. The dough is quite tricky to shape; you have to gently stretch out the rim of the dough, balancing it on your knuckles, passing it from one hand to the other to move it round... It's a technique that needs to be practised to be mastered! Of course, the classic move is to throw the dough in the air & catch it again. I didn't attempt this, but Wayne showed us how it was done =D
Once they were shaped, it was just a case of topping them & baking them. We opted for a traditional Margherita topping; tomatoes, mozzerella, basil & olive oil.
This was mine, all ready for baking =)
Now, quite what happened I'm not sure, but somehow or other my little pizza never made it back to me. I unloaded it from the oven a mere 4 minutes after it went in, looking all lovely & bubbly, then I popped it onto the rack to cool. When I went to collect it a bit later, it had vanished! =O
Luckily, Steph wasn't planning on taking her's home, so she gave it to me instead!
And very tasty it was too! =D
The Chicago pizza pie is a very strange beast indeed. Now, I'd heard of it, but never seen one before, let alone tried one. It is literally a pie. You line a deep tin with pizza dough, fill it with layers of cheese, tomato & goodness knows what else, then top it with a disc of pizza dough, before adding more tomato sauce & cheese & baking!
We had the usual grated cheeses & tomato sauce at our disposal, as well as peppers, onions, chillis, spiced meatballs, smoked sausage & pancetta (all the meaty products very kindly donated by Rich the Butcher). I threw in a bit of everything except the sausage, as I wasn't much of a fan of the smokiness...
Most folks made big pizza pies, but there were only little tins left when I came to construct mine, so I have two, slightly more reasonably sized pies =)
The naan breads were very similar to the pitta's in terms of shaping, except they were hand stretched rather than being pinned out with a rolling pin. They were brushed with melted butter or melted garlic butter, then into the oven for a few minutes.
Wayne also showed us how to make filled naans. All you do in flatten out a ball of naan dough, pop a spoonful of the desired filling (in this case a mix of whey cheese, chilli, lemon juice, mint & corriander - Yum!) then fold it up a little like a pasty, before forming it into a ball again. The dough is left to relax for 10 minutes, then gently stretched out into the classic teardrop shape =)
This was mine.
So far I've managed to resist the urge to eat it, but my goodness it smelt amazing!
So all in all it was a good day. Especially as Amy treated us all to cupcakes, decorated with all our faces!
Look! It's me! In icing!! =D
I do love how talented my fellow students are =D
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