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Preheat the oven to 230°C/450°F/Gas Mark 8. Divide the dough into balls the size of a large walnut. Roll out each one on a floured work surface until it is very thin. Place on an oiled baking sheet, allow to rest for 5–10 minutes then bake for 8–12 minutes, until the flat breads are crisp and light golden in places.
kitchen note
You can also make these breads from maize flour (polenta), chestnut flour or gram (chick pea) flour, using them to replace a third of the ordinary flour.
dry flat bread
Bought and home-made flat breads become stale quickly but they can still be worked into other meals. If they are still soft, tear them up, then toast until dry. Alternatively fry gently in olive oil. Store in jars ready for use in salads or soups.
bread salad
Cut or tear a dry or toasted flat bread into postage-stamp-sized pieces. Make a salad with the bread, Cos or romaine lettuce hearts, spinach or other leaves, herbs (parsley and dill), sliced tomatoes – the juice soaks nicely into the bread – and cucumber. Dress with just extra virgin olive or walnut oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper.
pizza margherita
San Gennaro is the patron saint of Naples, the birthplace of spaghetti and that other international fast food, pizza. It is also the name above the door of our local pizzeria in London. We are lucky. At San Gennaro they make pizza in the traditional way, with ingredients from Campania, the region around Naples that is famous for its wheat, tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. The proprietor, Enzo, operates on Neapolitan hours – the door never opens before 5.30 p.m. and it closes in the small hours. I first walked into this south London pizzeria late one August night. A few people were sitting at the bar drinking small glasses of home-made limoncello. We could have been in Campania itself and that was before we ate the pizza.
Good pizza dough is almost flaky, the air barely held inside, and breaks easily. It has a slight sourness, a faint smoky flavour where it has been charred by the heat of the oven. The secret of this recipe was revealed to me after an evening spent deep in the basement of San Gennaro, watching José make the dough. He refrigerates it overnight, so that it can be stretched to incredible thinness the following day.
‘Anyone can make good pizza,’ says Enzo. ‘You can be from Ecuador, Nigeria or London, but you need two things: authentic ingredients and “the knowledge”.’
Makes 2
4 tablespoons olive oil
8 basil leaves
6 tablespoons Tomato Sauce (see here (#litres_trial_promo))
120g/4oz buffalo mozzarella, cut into 1cm/
/
inch pieces
freshly ground black pepper
extra virgin olive oil, to serve
For the dough:
540g/1lb 2oz plain flour
/
teaspoon salt
7g sachet of fast-action (easy-blend) yeast
150ml/
/
pint milk, warmed to blood temperature
200ml/7fl oz water, warmed to blood temperature
2 tablespoons olive oil
Put the flour, salt and yeast in a mixing bowl and slowly add the milk and water, mixing until it forms a dough. Knead by hand (see here (#u37a000f9-6351-43bd-a9f5-46765d4791b8)) or in a food mixer until the dough is smooth and elastic. Add a little more flour if the dough is too sticky. Pour the oil into a large, clean bowl, add the dough and turn to coat it in the oil. Cover and place in the fridge for a minimum of 8 hours and up to 24 hours (you can use it sooner, after 2 hours, but it will not be pliable).
Preheat the oven to its highest setting (a commercial pizza oven cooks pizza at 350°C). A preheated pizza stone or perforated pizza baking dish helps; use in place of a baking sheet.
If you have time, bring the dough to room temperature before you shape the pizzas. Take half the dough and use your fingers to press it into a circle. Then pick it up and ‘open’ it with your hands by holding the edges and turning it about 45 degrees at a time. The pizza base should measure 30cm/12 inches across. Place on a baking sheet (or on the preheated pizza stone – but work fast when adding the tomato and cheese). Repeat for the second pizza.
Stir the oil and basil into the tomato sauce, then smear the sauce on to each circle of dough and scatter the mozzarella on top. Bake until the outer edge bubbles and turns crisp and the mozzarella is melted but not browned. Shake over a little extra virgin oil and grind over some black pepper before you eat the pizza.
kitchen note
Liquidised canned Italian tomatoes or passata can be used in place of the tomato sauce, but the pizza must cook fast at a high temperature for the tomatoes to sweeten and the juice to evaporate.
other uses for pizza dough
Try the Tuscan Schiacciata con l’uva, which is eaten during the grape harvest. Roll out the dough to a thin rectangle, sprinkle over a little Pernod or aniseed-flavoured alcohol, then fold it in three and roll again to about 5mm/1/4 inch thick. Scatter over a few red grapes – red wine grapes, if available, because their thin skins make them good for cooking. Bake at your oven’s highest setting until the dough is crisp, then serve sprinkled with a little sugar.
To make garlic bread, infuse 2 chopped garlic in 4 tablespoons of olive oil for an hour or two, then shake it over the uncooked pizza bases. Cut a few slashes in the centre of each one and bake as for pizza. Shake a little extra virgin olive oil over the bread as it comes out of the oven.
To make goat’s cheese pasties, roll out the dough thinly and cut it into rounds with a tumbler. In the centre of each one, put a spoonful of mild, fresh goat’s cheese and a little finely chopped dill or lightly cooked greens (such as chard or spinach, with all the water squeezed out). Brush the edges with water, fold over and pinch together to make little pasties. Bake until crisp and golden in an oven preheated to 230°C/450°F/Gas Mark 8.
making the most of stale bread
It is easy to glance around the kitchen and say, ‘I have nothing in the house’, but that is not strictly true if the end of a loaf is lurking in the bread bin. This section of the bread chapter is intended to change ‘I have nothing …’ to ‘hmmm, well perhaps …’, or even to, ‘I have eggs, I have some herbs and I can make toast …’ Then there are breadcrumbs, so quick to defrost after storage in the freezer, then fry in olive oil with a little garlic and parsley to serve with pasta, or use as a coating for meat that has been hammered thin (see here (#ulink_d97c35fb-7d6a-510e-80d4-fd2a5b615f37)).
The art of making bread go further has become almost extinct – partly because of the preservatives in commercially baked bread, but also because it is the kind of hand-me-down information that disappeared when mothers stopped cooking and broke the chain of food lore. It is not that recipes using stale bread are old-fashioned – Tuscan bread soups are now championed by contemporary chefs as one of the most delicious things in the world. Their recipes invariably suggest using the ubiquitous ciabatta but it is fine to make use of that old loaf of everyday bread.
Good bread deteriorates faster than sliced and wrapped factory-baked loaves containing preservatives such as citric acid. They will not, however, develop a mould quickly, but gradually dry out during the week. My experience with factory-made breads is that they deteriorate suddenly approximately six days after they are bought, when an outbreak of mouldy spots appear and the whole lot must go in the bin.
Sourdough bread, on the other hand, has an extraordinary life. The crust will dry but no spots appear for up to two weeks. Because it costs more, I tend to scrape or cut any mould away and continue popping the bread under the grill, where it obediently becomes springy inside and crisp on the outside – edible again.
This is what a home-made loaf can give, assuming it yields 10 slices of bread. Half the loaf is eaten fresh over a day for breakfast, or in packed lunches; 4 slices of the drying remains are toasted and put in the bottom of four soup bowls, then a vegetable broth spooned over; the remainder is made into breadcrumbs. Half the breadcrumbs are used to coat some hammered chicken thigh meat and the other half fried with herbs and nuts beside a separate dish of roast pheasant or partridge. Fifty pence goes a long way with food.
toast
There’s nothing new. The French have croûtons, Italians crostini – we have toast. Crostini sounds so neo-Italian, so latter-day peasant that it is easy to forget that it is simply toast. Putting things on toast is genius – ordinary, everyday items of food are greatly elevated by their toasted mattress of bread. Toast belongs to the British Isles, and it is one of those things that we do better than anyone else. Thick slices of toast with butter and marmalade, what better breakfast? Apart from perhaps boiled eggs and toast. Or scrambled eggs on toast.
My father was very fond of savouries. These were small dishes, often on toast, served after the main course. They are out of fashion now, outside the gentleman’s club. His favourite was sardines on toast – and yes, they were from a can. We quaked with horror at the table, but out came the macho Worcestershire sauce: ‘They must have Worcestershire sauce!’ And he was right. They were very good after a liberal shaking.
sardines on toast
I tried them again the other day, with very little modification, and liked them all over again. It is the same story of good and bad food in England. They do need good bread, good butter and good sardines. You can buy line-caught canned sardines from Spanish shops and delis. Ramon Bue is an excellent brand that has been around for ever – as long as Worcestershire sauce, in fact.
Serves 4
8 canned sardines
4 medium-thick slices of day-old bread
butter
Worcestershire sauce
chopped parsley
Pick over the sardines without damaging their silver skins. Where possible, remove the gritty spines or obvious bones. Toast the bread and spread it with butter while it is still hot. Lay fillets from 2 fish on top of each slice, skin-side up, and put under a hot grill for 2 minutes. Dress with Worcestershire sauce and sprinkle with parsley.
dripping toast
When well-hung beef is roasted, it produces a full-tasting dripping with a jelly beneath that can only be described as nectar. Hot toast or Melba Toast (see here (#u2c33e651-eef1-4889-8b52-d965765cb8aa)), cut nicely into triangles, with a fifty-fifty mixture of dripping and jelly spread on top, finished by black pepper and maybe a watercress leaf, is a completely respectable thing to serve with drinks. It fed the poor for centuries, but was killed off by tasteless, poorly hung meat. It is not an everyday dish; a little dripping is good for you but too much is not. But on those occasions when you splash out on the best beef joints, make sure you collect the dripping to make Roast Potatoes (see here (#ulink_38906e19-606a-5b39-a1f7-1e1964da7d4d)), pilaffs (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) – and for toast.
more good things on toast
Melted cheese – Try some of the new British and Irish cheeses as well as traditional farmhouse Cheddar and Double Gloucester. Lord of the Hundreds is used often in this book – a hard ewe’s milk cheese that melts to a tart, white cream. Other good melting cheeses include Saval, Malvern and Coolea, plus the obvious European mountain cheeses, Gruyère, Cantal, Emmental and Tilsiter.
Fresh, young goat’s cheeses – Soft white goat’s cheese can be crumbled on to toast, with herbs, salad leaves and olives, and dressed with a few drops of those piquant oils you can buy, infused with chilli or aromatic herbs.
Cooled scrambled eggs (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) – With added cream, scrambled duck or hen’s eggs on toast make a truly elegant starter or supper dish. If you like, you can add very thin, crisp bacon, fresh herbs or smoked fish, such as eel or trout.
Chicken livers and other offal (see here (#litres_trial_promo) and here (#litres_trial_promo)) – Chopped and fried with butter, chopped capers, anchovy and a little white wine.
Smoked fish – Organic smoked salmon or trout, mackerel or kippers, or perhaps the more unusual fish now being smoked by specialists, such as pollack and ling.
Herring – Filleted and fried in butter, then placed on hot toast that has been spread with a mixture of butter and mustard. Finish with lots of fresh dill.
North Atlantic or other cold-water prawns or Morecambe Bay grey shrimps (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) – Dress with a few herbs and scatter a little cayenne pepper and ground mace over the top.
Fried tomatoes – Go a step further and fry the day-old bread, then cover it with sweet fried tomatoes. Add a blob of crème fraîche or soured cream and a few basil leaves for something richer.
melba toast
Melba toast is made by splitting a piece of toast apart and baking it in the oven. It has a lovely old-fashioned feel to it and is wonderful with those smooth duck liver pâtés from delis, finished with a slice of pickled cucumber. Use it also as a base for semi-dried tomatoes (sold as sunblush) and dress with virgin olive oil, or break it up and throw it into leafy salads with herbs, spring onions, lemon juice and olive oil.
The renowned chef, Auguste Escoffier, named Melba toast after the prima donna, Dame Nellie Melba, in 1897. But in her book, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (Allen Lane, 1977), Elizabeth David found an earlier recipe written by the Scottish home cook, F. Marian McNeill, proving that Melba toast belongs as much in our own kitchens as it does in the grand dining rooms of old hotels.
Serves 4
4 thin slices of white or brown bread
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Toast the bread on both sides, then cut off the crusts. Using a serrated knife, split the toasted bread apart into 2 sides; you will find it comes away easily. Cut each side into 2 triangles, place them on a baking sheet and bake in the oven until dry. They tend to curl up, looking lovely as you bring them to the table in a basket.
kitchen note
To make a rich toast that will not go soggy, brush each side of the Melba toast with melted butter before you put it in the oven. This will keep for a week in an airtight container.
breadcrumbs
Like chicken bones, prawn shells and vegetable peelings, breadcrumbs are a gift to the cook. They are essentially ‘free’. The crusted end of a dry loaf or the cut-away crusts from Melba toast, once headed for the duck pond in the park, still form the basis of another meal. They can perform a variety of jobs, from making a filling winter pasta dish to becoming a summer salad, spiked with chilli and soaked with olive oil.
There are two ways to make breadcrumbs:
Simply put stale but soft bread into the food processor and whiz. These crumbs can be used for stuffings, bread sauce and meatballs, but if you want to dry them, put them on a baking sheet and place in a moderate oven until golden.
Or – dry out old bread slices and rolls in a moderate oven, then either whiz them in a food processor or put them in a strong, thick plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.
kitchen note
Dried breadcrumbs can be stored in an airtight container, where they will keep for at least three weeks. Fresh ones must be stored in the freezer.
bread sauces for poultry and game
These absorb and flavour the juices of poultry beautifully. I prefer them to bread-based stuffings which can take ages to cook, drying out the birds as they do so.
fried breadcrumbs with lemon
The pine nuts can be left out altogether, or replaced with pecans (for turkey), walnuts (for duck) or shelled unsalted pistachios (for partridge or pheasant).
Serves 4
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 heaped tablespoons fresh or dried breadcrumbs
zest of 1 lemon
4 sprigs of parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons pine nuts
/
teaspoon crushed pink peppercorns
Heat the oil in a small pan, add all the remaining ingredients and fry gently until golden. Serve with roast turkey, wild duck, partridge or pheasant.
kitchen note
Middle Eastern shops are the best places to buy dried nuts of every variety (and dried fruit, for that matter). Large bags of pistachios and walnuts are always fresh and cost about half the price of those found in conventional groceries and supermarkets.
almond, sherry and clove sauce
