Dough

One thing I was desperate to do quickly was to make pizza dough.  I'd had visions of binning the takeaway menus and going back to basics.  I h ave to say, my pizza was probably one of the tastiest I've had.  I used Kenwood's now deleted recipe but I added some Italian herbs to it.  The results were as follows - 

Uncooked veggie

Dough

Uncooked meat

Cooked veggie

Cooked meaty pizza

The husband is a meat eater (blech!), although he pretty rarely indulges himself.  I have no issue with him eating meat I just have no idea how to cook it.  I'm hopeful that little D is vegetarian too.
Anyway, on the left - my pizza, with mushroom, peppers, sweetcorn and shallots, on the right, the meaty one, with pepperoni, shallots and peppers


The cheese is a mixture of mozzarella and mature cheddar and the tomato base is a plain tomato passata.  I love garlic, so there is plenty of garlic hidden away beneath the top.  Next time I'll add some courgette.

My second dough related experiment was a bit of a nightmare if I'm honest.  I wanted to make naan breads.  I've made naan breads before without a breadmaker and was pleased with how easy they were to make.  The breadmaker version was really not all that great.  I used this recipe.  I used the dough setting on the breadmaker.  I have never seen such a gloopy mess, except for the time I tried to make pizza dough without a breadmaker perhaps.  I'm not saying it was the fault of the recipe but it just didn't work.  It was impossible to get out of the machine and even more impossible to clean much to my chagrin.  I heaped oodles and oodles of flour on to it to thicken it up a little and eventually it began to look passable.

Then came my next mistake.  Instead of separating into six small naans I created two huge ones and a small one.  The two huge ones absolutely bombed.  I put them in the oven for far longer than the time allotted and they still weren't cooked.  So I split them back up into five smaller ones, rolled out again and attempted to cook them again.  No dice.  They're on the left.

 Luckily, the one that I had left as a small one was more successful and looked like an actual naan bread.  It tasted a little strongly of baking powder for my liking and slightly set my teeth on edge.  I'll try a different recipe next time.

Other recent food related things - I cooked aubergine for the first time ever last night.  I expected it to be a nightmare to cook.  It wasn't.  I made a paella that worked out well - some of it was a little woodier but the majority of it was soft and lovely.  I'll do that again.  Sadly no pictures to share, maybe next time.  I've also epically failed at generating dinner tonight thanks to trying to cook and put baby to bed at the same time, something I definitely don't recommend.  The potatoes for my mash had fallen apart, making it difficult to drain.  I attempted to add cornflour to thicken it up.  VERY BAD MOVE.  The Quorn toad in the hole I made was supposed to be in the oven at Gas Mark 5 for 45 minutes, I put it in on Gas Mark 3 for an hour and a bit and it was uncooked.  Again, no photos.

I introduced Daniel to some butternut squash today.  At the weekend he completely sucked dry a couple of discs of cucumber.  He's still not really got the idea of food yet - he seems to think it's something that should be spread around his hands and his clothes rather than swallowing it.  I'm not quite following baby led as I'm sort of holding it in front of him, rather than him using his own hands.  Part of this is fear of the mess, part of it is because he really does need to start eating now.

Next post: Chilli Cheddar bread and Sundried Tomato and Parmesan bread.