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‘Breads and pizzas’ Category

  1. Experimenting with pizza stone – pizza with poolish method

    September 26, 2012 by Giulietta

    My dear friend MJ of Mj’s kitchen asked me a little time ago to write a guest post for her while she waits her kitchen’s remodeling. She asked me if I could write an Italian post, so I thought: what’s more Italian than… pizza?!

    And so here I am, talking about home-made pizza and pizza stone.

    Read my post over at MJ (visit her blog, anyway.. pay a visit, come on!) or here.

    This is not the first (nor the last) time I talk about pizza, one of the Great Italic Loves (with capital letters): we can fight as much as we want the stereotypes about Italians, pizza, pasta and mandolin, but I candidly admit that I couldn’t give pizza up. A little time ago I told you about Gabriele Bonci’s pizza (and I didn’t finish with it: I have a lot of seasonal combination to try), a high hydration pizza to prepare in a pan.

    But I’m always looking for new pizza recipes to try.

    Then, on my birthday, arrived unexpectedly a pizza stone, object of desire for a very long time: so I immediately started looking for a recipe expressly created to use my brand new pizza stone (which is nothing more than a refractory stone/brick, available in any building materials store)!
    Of course, we came close to drama when we found out, a few hours before the first experiment, that the stone didn’t allow the oven to close properly, but thanks to MacGyver‘s intervention (aka my father) we managed to avoid the crisis. Who would stop me now?

    The recipe I propose you came from Adriano of Profumo di lievito, a recipe that I have seen so many times around the net, and now I can confirm its magnificence. I’ll continue to experiment, but with this exciting beginning, I can only improve!

    ATTENTION: for this preparation you’ll need a full day: the process starts the evening before (otherwise you could prepare some dough in advance and freeze it: for the freezing solution, look at the bottom of the recipe).

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    Category Breads and pizzas, Italian cuisine, Leavened, Single course | Tags: ,,,, | 10 Comments

  2. Sciué sciué – friselle with cherry tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella

    July 28, 2012 by Giulietta

    Live from Calabria (haven’t I said that I’d write from somewhere else, this time?), in a seaside-holiday mode, I leave you a sciué sciué (it means “quick quick” in Naples) post, sciué sciué as the dish that I made, with a few (but good) ingredients, without cooking, without special equipment (just a dish, a bowl and a knife), but with a great taste.

    Furthermore, this simple dish reminds me of distant echoes of that bread and tomatoes that my grandmother made for me and my cousin as a snack, that we ate in the hammock in the shade of a thorn bush; but, even more, it reminds me of the hundreds of summer lunches that my father and I had with friselle, when the weather was so hot to get close to the stove. Maybe it’s because bread (or frisella), tomatoes, salt, oil and oregano (now I added something a little more sophisticated) it’s a mix both simple and perfect, maybe it’s because of this tender and fuzzy childhood memories or maybe it’s because the memories that from now on I’ll tie to this dish, but frisella for me is and will stay a summer must I’ll hardly give up … and why should I?!

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    Category Appetizer and Finger food, Breads and pizzas, Cheese, Cold dishes, Cooking for dummies, Extra-virgin olive oil, Herbs, Holidays, Regional Italian cooking, Southern Italy, Vegetables | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 6 Comments

  3. Pizza Party, featuring Gabriele Bonci’s pizza

    October 30, 2011 by Giulietta

    Hands up who doesn't love pizza! I bet no one raised his/her hand … let's face it, it's impossible not to love pizza, and not just 'cause I'm Italian, but 'cause I'm a human being with stomach and taste buds.

    Pizza is one of the wonders of the world, one of those things that everybody love, since it's incredibly versatile. This has always been my thought, but I've had further confirmation since I discovered Gabriele Bonci's pizza (discovered through my ​​friend Elisa, aka Kitty's Kitchen), a famous Roman pizza maker, whose pizza is now a true legend. Unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure of tasting his pizza, yet, but I plan to do that the next time I'll go to Rome (maybe sooner than later).

    However, thanks to some excellent videos I found on Dissapore web site and thanks to the advices of some fellow food bloggers, I was able to try and make His pizza, and the fact that I never tasted the original one could be an advantage… so I can't tell the differences. Having said that, I simply fell in love with this pizza, very hydrated (as you'll see, it contains a very high percentage of water), very well leavened (very slowly) and very, very light. So you won't feel guilty when you'll eat a slice more … and believe me, you will definitely do that, don't fight it!

    But do as I did, throw a nice pizza party, so you can share the guilt.
    My pizza party is also featured in this month 24×24 on Foodbuzz.

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    Category Breads and pizzas, Cheese, Cold cuts, Leavened, Party, Single course, Vegetables | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 27 Comments

  4. Do-it-yourself Oktoberfest: pretzels

    September 26, 2011 by Giulietta

    This is the active period of the famous Munich Oktoberfest: someone goes there, someone craves for it, someone thinks, deep down, that he could survive without it, someone content himself with one of the many Oktoberfest that, in recent years, take place in almost every Italian city.

    Now I stand in the ranks of those who, deep down, could also live without the Oktoberfest … let's be clear: I want to go there at least once in my life, but I don't make myself ill about it and certainly I don't consider it a matter of life or death.

    The real deal for me is trying to have at my fingertips those things that for me represent the essence of Bavaria or, more generally, Germany, so that I can enjoy a little Oktoberfest when I want to.

    These things are mainly three:

    1. A nice beer, possibly a Weissbier (wheat beer, my favorite among the German ones and typical of Bavaria):fortunately, I find a very good one at a local discount store.
    2. Pickled cucumbers. They are one of my manias: when I see them on the shelves I can't help myself and I have to take them, they remain attached to my hands. And if you ever entered a discount store, you know very well how many pickles jars look at you, and how good they are.
    3. Pretzels (in Italian brezel, in Bavarian bretzn), a bread crispy on the outside and soft inside, an absolute and  delicious German must (especially if cut in half and spread with butter). Sold in every street corner in Germany (do you remember the man who carries the pretzels in my Berlin picture?), but very hard to find in Italy. What if there was a way to circumvent this problem?!

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    Category Appetizer and Finger food, Breads and pizzas, German cuisine, Leavened | Tags: ,,, | 44 Comments

  5. Cheesy and delicious: focaccia di Recco

    June 27, 2011 by Giulietta

    If you happen by Recco, or other towns nearby on the East Coast of Liguria, you have to taste the famous focaccia di Recco, provided that you like stracchino very much, 'cause in a focaccia di Recco there is more or less the amount of stracchino that you could eat in a year or two.

    One of the major drawbacks of the focaccia di Recco is that it's almost impossible to find outside of its area of ​​origin. So, to avoid abstinence from this cheesy focaccia, why don't try to make a home-made version?! And, even before starting to search a fine recipe, it literally fell on me, and would never ignore a clear sign of destiny, especially when it comes to food!

    So, while I was surfing through my foodie friends' blog to keep me posted, I came across the perfect recipe to prepare my beloved focaccia di Recco, by Manuela from Manu's Menu.

    The recipe is very easy to prepare, doesn't require long waiting times (the dough isn't leavened), and it requires only a great amounts of stracchino (the original recipe suggested the use of 1 kg of stracchino for 500 g of flour; both Manuela and I halved -or almost- the doses). Are you ready for it?

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    Category Appetizer and Finger food, Breads and pizzas, Cheese, Liguria, Regional Italian cooking | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 21 Comments

  6. A taste of Indian cuisine: cheese naan and aloo naan

    June 3, 2011 by Giulietta

    Today I completely change my tune and, after a lot of Italian cuisine and some occasional forays into Chinese, Spanish and Tex-Mex cuisine, today I travel towards an entirely different ethnic cuisine, landing in India.

    Some time ago, a friend of mine with a passion for cooking organized an Indian themed dinner, and like all our themed dinners (I miss them… we urgently need a new one!), this involves rolling up your sleeves and try something new, sometimes very different from what I normally cook. So, while others prepared meat dishes, desserts, meat balls and chickpeas flapjacks, I decided to try one of the Indian dishes that I love the most, cheese naan. But since I wasn't satisfied, I wanted to try also aloo naan, so I did a double experimentation. Actually, the basis for these two recipes is the same: in both cases, it's a stuffed leavened (but flat in shape) bread. The change, in fact, is in the filling: while cheese naan is (needless to say) stuffed with cheese, aloo naan is stuffed with mashed spicy potatoes.

    It won't be the traditional naan (I haven't the traditional clay tandoori, in fact), but I tried to be as accurate as possible, thanks to Manjula's Kitchen, a fantastic site dedicated to Indian vegetarian cuisine, curated by Manjula, who accompanies each recipe with an explanatory video.

    As for these dishes, I went by Manjula's aloo naan recipe, while I prepared cheese naan according to my taste, replacing the filling.

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    Category Appetizer and Finger food, Breads and pizzas, Cheese, Indian cuisine | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 18 Comments