Focaccia del Turista

When summer arrives, our ways change. We wear sandals, skirts and dresses with no tights (what a relieve !). We exchange baking cakes for making salads and summer soups. We eat outside, where the last rays of sun shine and the blackbirds prelude the night.

Since last summer we have the habit of eating a pizza on Sunday nights at our favorite restaurant in Argegno.
They have the greatest pizza's there, the dough is different from any other pizza place and the ingredients are super fresh and delicious. I am especially in love with the 'Focaccia del Turista', a pizza with leeks, fresh salmon, cream, mozzarella and fresh tomatoes. How good does that sound!?

As I'm still only good with one arm, my shoulder is healing slower then expected, I tried to make a simple dish with leftovers. It turned out to be a delicious version of my favorite Argegno pizza.

Here is the recipe:

You will need for 1 big pizza:
1 sheet of store bought puff pastry
1 small leek
150 grams of smoked or fresh salmon
100ml of cream
1 small ball of mozzarella
2 organic medium eggs
a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper
(I had some left over mashed potatoes that I added, but this is not necessary at all)

Preheat the oven on 180 degrees Celsius.
Roll out your sheet of puff pastry and fold 1cm of the edges to the inside to make a border.
Finely slice and wash the leeks and sprinkle on top of the pastry. Add slivers of the salmon and mozzarella, poor over the cream. Break the eggs onto the pizza, one on each side. Add the thyme leaves and some salt and pepper to season. For some more body you can add some cherry tomatoes or small potato cubes. You can also leave the eggs out, if you don't feel like them.

Bake the pizza for about 20 minutes and eat right away with a fresh salad!

Buon appetit!

Focaccia del Turista

The real thing!

Making bread!

Almost every day now I bake my own bread. I love the feeling of soft dough in my hands and the way it rises in the bowl. I bake brown bread, white bread, corn bread and pane di segale, a very dark brown soft bread which my Love likes to eat for breakfast with a thick layer of Nutella on it.
Since I have my new oven I can't stop baking and trying out new stuff every time. Today I will bake brioche, the sweet soft French bread which is so great for breakfast with some butter and marmalade.

For my basic bread recipe I use:

500 grams of flour
25 grams of fresh yeast
10 grams of salt
350 ml warm water
10 grams of sugar

I mix the flour with the salt in a big bowl. Then mix the water, yeast and sugar in a separate bowl and give it a good stir to resolve the yeast in the water. Then mix the water in the flour at once and kneed to a soft smooth ball.
put a damp cloth over the bowl and let the dough rise for about an hour or two on a warm place.

Then grease your baking tin or oven-plate and dust it with flour. Kneed the air out of the dough and place it in the baking tin. Cover with the damp cloth or plastic foil and let it rest again for an hour.

Preheat the oven on 200 degrees Celcius. remove the cloth or plastic foil and bake the bread for 20 minutes on 200 degrees and another 30 minutes on 180 degrees. Take it out of the oven and out of the baking tin. Eat as fresh as you can!

Yesterday I felt like baking a quick pizza with broccoli, mozzarella and gorgonzola. I used Jamie Oliver's pizza dough recipe. I rolled the dough out really thin but it was still a bit bread-like, very tasty but I still prefer the more crunchy version, I think it needs less yeast. I will work on that!

cinnamon and date bread

white bread

cornbread

whole wheat bread

pizza della casa