The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [107]
Form the dough into a ball and place it smooth side up in the bowl. Cover and keep in a warm, draft-free place. After about an hour and a half, gently poke the center of the dough about ½ inch deep with your wet finger. If the hole doesn’t fill in at all or if the dough sighs, it is ready for the next step. Press flat, form into a smooth round, and let the dough rise once more as before. The second rising will take about half as much time as the first.
Turn the dough out on a lightly floured board. Shape it into a smooth round (or rounds, if you are going to make two) and let it rest until quite soft. With floured or wet hands, pat it from one side to the other to press out all the accumulated gas. Keep patting and pressing—or flinging and twirling—being careful not to tear the dough, until it is the size and shape you need. The dough fills one large or two small pizza pans, or a 12″ 18″ cookie sheet. Pull a little extra dough up around the edge to keep the sauce from spilling over; if the dough is too elastic for this, let it rest a few minutes, and try again. After it relaxes, it will stretch more easily.
Mix sauce ingredients in blender or food processor or hand food mill until smooth.
Spread on the sauce, and let the bread rise again in a warm place for about half an hour, or until it is soft and spongy. Bake about 25 minutes in a well-preheated oven, 375°F.
SAUCE
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic
3 tablespoons tomato paste
⅔ cup chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon each, oregano and basil
¼ teaspoon pepper
Cheesy Pizza
Use this recipe to make normal pizzas: they can be as authentic or homey as your mood dictates. Roll the dough thinner, making two rounds about 14 inches across. Brush with olive oil, and spread with tomato sauce. (If you like plenty of sauce, you will need about two cups, twice as much as the above recipe provides.) Add olives, green peppers, mushrooms, or what have you, and top with grated cheese. Mozzarella, about 1 cup grated cheese per pizza, plus grated Parmesan, is traditional, but if there is none on hand, jack (or cheddar even) will fill the bill for most occasions.
Sour Cream Biscuits
2 teaspoons active dry yeast (¼ oz or 7 g)
¼ cup warm water (60 ml)
3 cups whole wheat flour (450 g)
1 teaspoon salt (5.6 g)
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder (4.5 g)
½ teaspoon baking soda (1.5 g)
1 egg
1 ¼ cups mock sour cream* (300 ml)
1 teaspoon honey, optional (5 ml)
These are real biscuits with extraordinary flavor, very light because they rise not only from the usual baking powder and soda but from yeast as well. No one who’s not in the know ever suspects that you can make such tender, tasty biscuits with so little fat. For best tenderness, use a medium-gluten flour, or part bread flour and part pastry flour.
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.
Sift together the dry ingredients, returning any bran that stays in the sifter back into the mixture.
Beat the egg and mix it with the mock sour cream and the honey, if used. Add them and the yeast mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring as well as possible, and then kneading briefly until the dough sticks together.
Turn out on a lightly floured board. Roll with rolling pin to thickness of about ½ inch. Cut with 3-inch biscuit cutter, dipping it in flour between biscuits.
Set the biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet and leave them for an hour at room temperature; or at least three hours, or overnight, in the refrigerator. Cover them to prevent their drying out.
Before baking, preheat the oven thoroughly, to 450°F. Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until delicately brown. Serve hot.
*If you want to avoid using the white sugar, many possibilities exist for substitutes: one would be to use ricotta or cream cheese sweetened with pale honey, applying it just before