Thin and crispy Pizza, Bread Rolls and Focaccia

I swear I am not addicted to pizza, but now I have tried the pizza base, I wanted to make sure the basmati dough could “cut it” and it totally does. I think it was even better than the quinoa as I could not taste the base at all. I think quinoa base, however is healthier as it is a whole seed whereas the basmati rice, though low GI is a white rice, therefore has been stripped of a lot of its goodness. Honey and I are looking around for brown basmati, so far the only place I have seen it locally was woollies- and it was the pre-cooked stuff. Not much good for bread-making. Recipe here

So bread rolls, you take them for granted when they don’t mess with your digestion/you don’t realise they are messing with your digestion… how does the basmati  dough cope? I have some buns in the oven, and I will keep you posted.

Focaccia, I miss you… nothing like walking into a bakery and having a focaccia you can’t eat, staring at you, mouth drooling… so it really was no contest- I had to see if I could try a focaccia. I thought it would be somewhere between cooking a pizza and a bread loaf.

With the pizza you don’t want the topping cooking before the bread base is done. Therefore the cast-iron frying-pan is my method of choice.

My morning went something like this…

Today I should make bread (Honey loved the bread from yesterday)… oooh and a bread-roll, AND a pizza and a focaccia. I was mentally deciding how to divide the dough as I was paying for my goods at the veggie store.

I had 2 lots of dough left (one I needed to make the bread with) so the last ball was divided in half one half for the focaccia, the 2^nd ball was divided in halves again one made the thin pizza base and the other the bread-roll.

So I popped them aside to prove.

I then milled the ingredients for the Jasmine Rice bread and mixed it together.

Deciding that the Pizza base did not need quite 2 hours to prove, I made it first. This time when I popped it into the oven I used a heated oven tray as I needed the cast iron frying-pan to begin the focaccia with.

I made the base of the focaccia like a very  thick pizza base, rolling it with a glass (and having it between glad wrap and baking paper, before leaving it to prove for just under 2 hours.

I then followed the same method I use for cooking pizzas on the stove; I added the sauce, pineapple, bacon and cheese when the steam had reached the frying-pan lid.  Similarly I cooked the focaccia on the oven tray (Transferring it over when the pizza was done) and popped the cast-iron frying pan into the oven to heat for the bread to cook on.

Now I don’t usually bother with the bath of water for the pizza but I popped it in for the focaccia. Which I kept a check on, but ended up being in the oven for about ½ hour.

The focaccia bread has been out of the oven and resting in a tea-towel with the baking paper it was sitting on coving the top to protect the focaccia and the tea-towel from each-other.

I cut myself a tiny wedge (The pizza was quite filling) and decided I needed another wedge. The rest will be for Honey to try when he arrives home from work.  

Jasmine Bread

So today I got the milling quantities right, halve the tapioca and brown rice to mill. What I noticed was that leaving the grains in for a full minute made the flour finer. So one half of the tapioca flour is finer than the other half. As I wanted the rice to substitute for the sorghum, which is apparently a coarse flour, I milled 220g of the brown rice coarsely (milling for 30 seconds not a minute) and the rest (Jasmine and 80g of brown) fine. I am not sure how this will affect the outcome of the bread. What I can say is that the jasmine rice flour smelled divine. I am very much looking forward to trying this bread.

Jasmine rice is one of the highest GI rices, though delicious, and my sister-friend makes the best coconut rice with it. If you are following a low GI diet, basmati would be the better choice, and perhaps milling the long-grain brown rice (300g) would also be more beneficial for you too. Jasmine bread might just have to be my “sometimes” bread. In saying that, Honey and I are looking for brown jasmine as well to experiment with. Using the whole grain of rice will definitely improve the health factor.

I have decided I cannot wait a whole day to try the jasmine bread so I took a lump out and it is proving as we speak.

The jasmine loaf is finished; I am surprised that it is not as golden brown on top as its basmati cousin. Due to me taking more care with the milling, the crust appears finer; the basmati loaf has “flecks of white” and looks generally grainier. Though the dough felt grainy the correct milling did make a difference to the end result.

My cooking would not be complete without some kitchen malfunctions. The first being, I measured too much jasmine rice into the Thermomix. I pulled some out, put them to the side and they slipped into the pile of flours. To fix, I sieved the flour which removed the grains of rice and a few of the larger tapioca flower “beads” from the 30 second milling.

I bumped the jasmine loaf as I was popping it into the oven… and confession time- I have never remembered to do the knife thing across the top before putting my loaves into the oven (Ok the very first one that ended up chucked out raw due to glass contamination, really does not count. The bread still tastes good.

Well I have now tasted the bread, and it is delicious too, and Honey and his housemate agrees. There is not much difference in the flavour of the jasmine bread to the basmati, but the Jasmine definitely tastes slightly sweeter than the basmati without anything added to it (Remember I liked with with honey, and thought it would be nice with vegemite). The finely milled grains made the crust crisper and if everyone was having damper and I “had to” have this I would not be disappointed.   

I dream of brown Jasmati… having the 300g of brown basmati, 220g of Jasmine… I am sure that you are in my future. But next up is Cornmeal bread, which I am looking forward to trying too.

Judie