Pizza, cinnamon rolls, cheesecake, muffins, rosemary buns, sometimes naan and rolls for sandwiches
Roasted red pepper hummus, applesauce, roasted red peppers (which I freeze for hummus and sandwiches)
Cooked beans from dry
Taco seasoning
Fresh salsa for tacos (but I still buy cooked store salsa for chips)
Also "When dough is prepared" is a little vague. How long should the dough be kneaded? By hand or with a food processor? Do you add more flour? Can you be a little more specific? I want to try this recipe!
Best I can describe the process:
Dry ingredients in a bowl.
Add warm water and stir with a fork.
When it gets good and thick, fork no longer works, so oil your hands and just work it into a ball
You want to wind up with dough about the consistency of playdough, so careful not to add too much water.
Put ball of kneaded dough in a bowl, cover with towel and set on top of stove where it's warm as your oven pre-heats
Just use your (oiled) hands to flatten it out on a big (oiled) baking sheet, thinner the better, then pinch form the outside edge
Spread out some marinara or red sauce of your preference
Add meats and veggies
Cover with lots of shredded mozzarella cheese
Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes, check bottom of crust with a spatula to assure it gets a little crispy, may need to leave in a little longer.
Thanks Fishindude, but my questions were specifically about the kneading part, since I'm not an experienced yeast bread baker. How long to knead? By hand or can you use a food processor? Add flour when kneading or no? What should the texture be like? I can do all the other parts, it's the kneading I'm unsure of. Thank you!
Here's the recipe/process I use for pizza. We cut it into 8 pieces. 2 pieces is a decent meal. Once you get good at it, you can make pizza in less than an hour.
- Slice an 8-oz container of cheap mushrooms. Slice any other veggies you may want to use.
- Drizzle olive oil in skillet heated to medium, drop in mushrooms, drizzle in more oil, add some salt and pepper. Let the mushrooms sit undisturbed until the water has come out of them, has boiled away, and they have started to sizzle once more. Then scrape up and stir the mushrooms as they brown. Add in any other veggies (bell pepper? onion?) that you want on the pizza. Once those have lost a little water, turn off the burner/hob.
- Mix:
1 cup AP flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (or more AP, if you don't have whole wheat)
2 1/4 tsp (equivalent of 1 packet) quick-rise/bread machine yeast
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
in a big bowl. - Run the tap until the water is hot enough that it is just under the edge of uncomfortable, then mix in 1 cup of that tap water and 2 Tbsp olive oil.
- Stir with a big wooden spoon. Maybe you will have a little dry flour around the edges of the bowl, but that is okay. Dump the dough out onto your counter that has had a layer of AP flour added. Dust a little more AP flour over the top of the dough. Knead the dough vigorously for at least five minutes. You can add a little AP flour at a time if needed to keep the dough from sticking to your hands and the counter, but don't add more than the minimum. Pizza dough is supposed to be a wetter dough. No one can be too specific about how much flour you'll need because it depends on humidity in your house, among other things.
- When you get sick of kneading, put the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with a damp kitchen towel (not terrycloth, something smooth that the dough won't eat). Let it sit somewhere warm for 20 minutes or until you are tired of waiting.
- Meanwhile, clean off the floury counter, wash what dishes you can, slice up some mozzerella (I usually use 8 oz sliced thinly with this much dough), grate some parmesan, get out the marinara sauce (or pizza sauce or spicy Fra Diavolo sauce!), and preheat the oven to 400°F. Last, get out a rolling pin and the cookie sheet or pizza pan.
- Eh, it's probably been long enough! Roll out your pizza dough to the size of your metal cooking flat thing. Once the oven is preheated, pop in just that crust for 7 minutes.
- When the first bake is done, use a spoon to crush any massive air bubbles that may have turned half your pizza into a stupid balloon. Cover the crust with sauce, then parmesan, then mozzerella, then your pan-fried veggies. Bake for 7+ more minutes, at least until the mozz is melted, but if you want the mozz to brown a bit, that might be tasty.
I'm sure you could use a stand mixer for the dough, but I don't have one. You really aren't going to mess up the dough much whatever you do, as it should be pretty flat bread ideally whatever happens. The edges will naturally end up a little thicker than the middle, so you don't need to fuss with pinching them into a certain shape.
I use two 1-cup measuring cups: one for water, one for flour. Then, I use the flour measuring cup to add flour a bit at a time to the dough when kneaded as needed (haha). This way I don't have a big pile of flour off to the side that might be contaminated and never used.
I strongly recommend frying or otherwise cooking mushrooms and bell peppers before using them on pizza. Mushrooms, the little stinkers, release a LOT of water when they are cooked. That's fine in your pan, because the water boils away, but fresh mushrooms on your pizza will leave you with gross puddles on your cheese (or still-raw mushrooms). Raw peppers are also pretty bad about this, but not as bad as mushrooms.
I cook the crust a bit before adding toppings because this seems to keep the crust from ending up soggy on top.
Make sure you like the sauce you chose for the pizza. If you don't like the sauce, you won't like your pizza.
Once you've made this a couple times, you can make it a stuffed-crust pizza by rolling the dough out 1 inch wider on all sides, slicing another 8 oz of mozzerella into little logs, and folding those mozz logs into the edges of the dough. Pinch it pretty well sealed all around, but don't worry if you get a massive mozz leak into the center of your pizza.
Another thing you can try later is to leave the basil and oregano out of the crust and top the crust (after first bake) with sliced tomatoes, salt and freshly ground pepper, lots of chopped garlic, chopped basil, parm cheese, and last mozz cheese. (This has no sauce.) It is pretty good with tasty ripe tomatoes, and the tomatoes don't release a lot of water.