friederike's Reviews
3 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 3Sort by: Title 
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Bourke Street Bakery
By Paul Allam, David McGuinness
Murdoch Books - 2009
Pizza Dough : page 141
In the beginning I was suspicious. It just seemed like too much liquid, and too much salt. I added half the salt, then tasted the dough halfway through and decided that yes, the whole amount of salt would actually be a good idea. I also disregarded the advice for the kitchen machine, as the dough threatened to clog my hand-held device very quickly, and I let it rise the way I always do, covered with a clean, wet tea towel, in the oven at about 40°C. Regarding the liquid: it turned out as a fairly sticky dough, but that wasn't a problem for rolling out. And best of all: if you bake it long enough, you'll be rewarded with a very very nice, thin and crispy pizza.
We used this dough for the Pizza with Onion and Smoked Mackerel, a topping I liked a lot.
Edited 18 November:
I used fresh yeast this time, and that wasn't such a great idea. Luckily I only added 300 of the 410 ml water in the beginning - even so, the dough was really, really wet and sticky (more so than last time). I tried rolling it out, but that was impossible, and we ended up adding a lot of extra flour. Better to use dry yeast, or a recipe that specifically requires fresh yeast...
useful (0)
Sourdough Bread : page 50
I'm not really sure what to make of it. I had my doubts during several of the preparation stages - never mind how long I (or the bread baking machine) kneaded the dough, it always tore instead of being elastic; it was very difficult to achieve the right temperature and humidity during the last rising stage, and as I had to do that in the oven, there was just no way I could have placed the bread in the preheated oven immedeately afterwards. But in the end, while it looked more like a Turkish flatbread than anything else, it was very delicious and the texture was surprisingly good. It has risen, even though more sideways than upwards (and I can identify with that *sigh*). DB thought the bread tasted too sour; I didn't really notice.
The recipe says it'll make three loaves - tiny loaves, in my opinion; next time I'll divide the dough into two loaves. Because we had only baked the first two loaves in the beginning, we were able to place the third one in a baking tin and see how that went - it looks absolutely fine, though I can't yet tell if it had any other effect. The only thing that would really keep me from making it again is the complexity - really, I spent hours last night, kneading and waiting and kneading and cleaning up again, ...
useful (1)
Sourdough Starter : page 41
Worked perfectly, though I did regret having to throw away so much starter every couple of days. Yet, it worked, and it didn't spoil when I forgot feeding it once in a while. Worked better than the starter I tried last year (based on this book's website).
useful (1)