Fresh Yeast Pizza Dough

As I type this, a friend of mine is cooking in Umbria, Italy. After returning from my cooking vacation in Italy, I passed along the business card. What do you know, he booked!

I can not wait to hear about his vacation. If his stay is anything like mine, it is going to be one his favorite vacations.

All this reminiscing is going somewhere, I promise.

Pizza Dough.

On the first day of my cooking course, I learned how to make real Italian pizza dough. It was so easy and tasted simply divine.

I promised myself I would make homemade dough from then on out.

No delivery.

No frozen pizza.

Homemade pizza all the way.

Well, to say that I didn’t hold to that promise is putting it lightly.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been ordering more pizza lately than I’d care to admit.

You see, Sebastian and I have started a bit of a bad habit. For the past 3 weeks, we’ve ordered pizza every Tuesday.

Gross, I know.

Yesterday, I put a stop to this dirty habit by preparing enough homemade pizza dough to last us 6 weeks.

Here’s my step-by-step to homemade pizza dough and how to use fresh yeast.

Let’s get started!

Simple stuff here: 1 kg of all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. sugar, 2 blocks fresh yeast, 2 large pinches of salt, 2 (+) cups of warm water.

Here’s what a block of fresh yeast looks like in Germany. It is kept in the refrigerator section of the grocery store and costs about 20 cents.

Pull back the paper and this is what you get. A dry, crumbly block of yeast. You can already smell it by now.

The bowl contains the sugar and 2 cups of warm water. All you have to do is break up the yeast and drop it into the waiting water.

Fresh yeast has a strange texture, one I’m not quite sure how to describe. Sort of rubbery and spongy all at once.

    Stir the yeast and water, breaking up any yeast chunks and allowing it to evenly dissolve. Then, set the yeast off to the side and let it do its thing.

  Meanwhile, mix the flour and salt.

After only a minute or so, the yeast will begin to foam.

It’s alive!!!

  Make a well in the flour and pour the yeast mixture in.

Now put your camera down and get in there with your hands.

Mix, mix and mix some more.

  Add more water as needed to form an elastic dough. I added about 1/4 cup more water.

Once the dough looks like this, it’s ready to be turned onto a floured surface.

 Now it’s time to kneed.

  Kneed the dough for about 7 minutes, or until it is smooth and stretchy.

Almost there, feel free to add another dusting of flour if the dough begins to stick to your surface.

Looks good!

  Place the dough into a large floured bowl. Flour the top and sides of the dough as well.

Slice an X into the top. You will literally be able to see the dough rise in front of you. 

Fresh yeast is the way to go!

Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let the dough rise in a warm place. My sunny radiator worked great.

Here is what the dough looked like about 20 minutes later.

1 hour later.

After an hour of rising, punch the dough down.

Kneed the dough again for a few minutes.

Cut the dough into 6 even portions.

Individually kneed each of the dough balls.

Roll each ball around in flour to prevent sticking in the bag.

    Place each pizza dough into a freezer-safe bag.

Close the bag and freeze until ready to use.

To use a frozen dough, simply remove from the freezer a day before you want to make pizza. Allow the dough to thaw in the refrigerator. 1 hour before making the pizza, place the dough in a large bowl in a warm place and let it rise once more. Punch down, kneed and bake as usual.

With plenty of pizza dough ready to go, I really have no more excuses. 

Frozen pizza is a thing of the past.

To see more about my experiences taking cooking lessons in Italy, visit the links below.

Learning about Umbria from other Bloggers

Welcome to Italy and Florence

European Chocolate Festival

Cooking School Day 1

Cooking School Day 2

Cooking School Day 3

Cooking School Day 4

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Before going to bed, I wanted to wish my big brother, Ben, a very happy birthday.

I admire your positive attitude and jovial nature.

I’ve been thinking about you all day.

Just so you know, there are 18 little kids from all over the world, currently living in Germany, who heard about 15 Brother Ben stories today.

You’re awesome and I’m so lucky to have you for a big brother. I love you, Boy.

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Strawberry Scones

This recipe was most recently added to my new and improved Recipe Wish List.

It didn’t stay as a wish for long. These delicate scones served as a fancy Saturday breakfast.

This recipe was easy, tasted great and made good use of strawberries that desperately needed to be used.

I followed the recipe exactly, starting with the chopped up strawberries, milk and vanilla.

 

Grating frozen butter is a great substitute for a pastry cutter.

  See? Works great!

After the butter, baking powder and flour were well combined, I added the wet ingredients.

For some reason, my dough was very wet. So wet in fact, that I couldn’t shape the dough into a ball to cut into the standard scone triangles. Rather than adding more flour, I kept to the recipe and just made 9 drop-biscuit-like mounds.

They only needed to bake for about 10 minutes.

The texture was so light and airy. I would like to try the recipe again, but next time will add more flour and less baking powder (there was a bit of a baking powder after-taste.)

All and all, this recipe is a keeper. These scones would be great with blueberries too.

After eating two of these beauties Saturday morning, I went to the gym for Body Balance. Once the class was over and I was all cleaned up, Sebastian met me for a Saturday outing.

Karneval starts this week. Outside of the gym there was a small celebration going on to reveal the parade float for one of the local Karneval clubs.

We had 2 free entrance tickets for the August Macke house. Seeing that it was a rainy day, we felt being indoors was a good idea.

The artist, August Macke, lived in this house from 1910-1914 before being killed in WWI.

Macke was very young when he died, leaving behind his wife and two young sons. His wife remarried one of August Macke’s best friends who, sadly, died in a concentration camp during WWII.

Macke’s wife, Elisabeth, returned to Bonn to live in the art studio of her late first husband. She resided there until her own death. I can not imagine loosing two husbands and growing old, alone, in the attic studio of my desist love.

The bottom two floors of the August Mache house are used for art exhibitions. The current exhibition is a collection of art depicting the Dilborn Palace between 1911-1931.

Warm, dry, out of the rain and into the art. This was a great way to spend a rainy day.

What is your favorite way to spend a rainy day?

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Cookies and Aquatics

I know I say it every weekend, but this weekend really flew past.

Saturday I woke up with a migraine so took some heavy-duty medicine and went back to bed until 11:30. Luckily, once I woke up again, I felt much better.

The (mid)day started with brunch.

Peanut butter and banana stuffed French toast with coffee.

After breakfast, Sebastian and I headed across the Rhine to visit Sea Life in Königswinter.

We had a two for the price of one coupon.

You have to go deep into the ground to begin the experience. The interiors are designed in a very mysterious, dark and dramatic way. Great attention to detail.

Due to the dark lighting, it was hard to take good photos.

At least some of the aquariums were bright enough to photograph without a tripod.

This guy looked like rubber but wasn’t. 

The tanks were beautiful and the fish were peaceful to watch.

Some aquariums have spherical glass which helps you to see the fish even better. Just be ready for the fish to ‘come at you.’ Also, don’t walk into the glass. You’ve been warned.

The most dramatic part of Sea Life is the glass tunnel. We couldn’t tell from below, but we were walking through the shark tank.

With every step, the tank creaked a bit. Sebastian felt safer walking on the metal beams. 

After taking the stairs above ground, we could see the shark tank as well as the sting rays.

Before we knew it, the aquatic portion of our adventure was over and we were fed into the world of over-priced merchandise. 

 Although I thought this mug was adorable, I wasn’t about to spend 7 Euros on it.

While waiting for our ferry, we made a stop-over in the Sea Life cafe.

I had a blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee to hold me over. We had a good time but were in and out in about 45 minutes. Sea Life is really geared towards kids and has a lot of hands-on activities and games for kids to play along the way. I’m glad we went but am equally glad that we didn’t pay full-price for entrance.

Once home, I baked a batch of almond cookies from the Veganomicon cookbook.

I made a few of the big cookies then scaled them down to a more manageable size.

The recipe made a ton of cookies so I froze about half of the dough in balls, ready to be tossed in the oven when my cookie stash is out.

These cookies are so delicious!

Although I don’t have a photo yet, these cookies, when crumbled up, make a great topping to Greek yogurt and fresh strawberries. It’s like a quick-fix strawberry shortcake. Just divine!

Saturday night, Sebastian and I went out again, armed with another buy-one-get-one-free coupon for our favorite Indian restaurant in Bonn.
Since having the coupon book, we’ve probably eater at Taste of India about 10 times, but have never claimed the coupon. Since the book expires in a month, we thought it was about time to redeem our free meal.

Usually I can lick the little copper pots clean but this time we took home leftovers. Lucky for us, leftovers served as lunch on Sunday.

Mattar paneer with naan.

Finger-licking good!

Speaking of Sunday, I had a great breakfast of Mediterranean scrambled eggs with a whole wheat English muffin.

2 eggs, green olives, spinach, tomatoes, roasted red pepper and feta cheese.

I spent most of Sunday at the computer reorganizing my beloved Recipe Wish List. I’ll tell you more about it later, but think I’ve finally found a free solution to make my recipe saving easier and more user friendly. 

I went to the gym Sunday night for a great yoga class then came home to do a bit of school work before calling it a night.

Although this wasn’t the most productive weekend, it was a lot of lazy fun. Sometimes more sleep and simple outings are all you need to enjoy the precious weekends.

I hope you all had a good weekend and were able to start the week out right. Happy Monday!

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Chocolate Sugar Cookies

After not one but two posts dedicated to sugar cookies in the last week, I promise this one is the last for a while.

Although I preferred the vanilla sugar cookies, chocolate was a nice change.

This recipe also came from Annie’s Eats.

It was simple, used on-hand ingredients and made my kitchen smell amazing.

Simple stuff, vanilla, butter, powdered sugar, salt, flour, egg and coco powder.

Sift the powdered sugar into the same large bowl containing the butter. 

Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  Add the egg and vanilla.

Blend until incorporated.

Sift together the flour, coco powder and salt.

  Add the dry ingredients to the wet and blend on low speed until just combined.

I found the dough to be very wet and sticky. Once it had sat in the refrigerator overnight, it was much more manageable.

  Lightly flour your work surface, roll the dough and begin to cut out.

 The first round of dough was the best. Once it was drier from the extra flour, the cookies were a bit more tough.

Now it’s time for icing the cookies. 

from Annie’s Eats and Martha Stewart

Ingredients:
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup Dutch process cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
6 tbsp. (3 oz.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar
1 large egg
½ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine the butter and sugar with an electric mixer.  Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. 
2. Blend in the egg and vanilla. 
3. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder and salt.  With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated and no streaks remain. 
4. Form the dough into a disc, wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, 1-2 hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 325˚ F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. 
6. On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough out to about ¼-inch thickness.  Cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters and place cut outs on the prepared baking sheet.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes, just until set.  Let cool on the baking sheet about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Decorate as desired.

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Vanilla Sugar Cookies

Valentine’s Day was made extra sweet with the addition of the sugar cookies I made for my students, colleagues and of course, my Love, Sebastian.

The idea for these sweet cookies came from a beautiful post at Annie’s Eats.

Although my cookie cutter was much smaller than hers, I tried to recreate the adorable marbled designs she used.

This was my first attempt using royal icing and marbling but I was really pleased with the results.

I adapted a sugar cookie recipe from Annie’s Eats as well.

What can I say, when someone does it right, there’s no need to go anywhere else.

Annie’s sugar cookie called for almond extract but due to allergies, almond products aren’t allowed at school.

As a result, my cookies were vanilla through and through.

Simple ingredients for delicious cookies.

Cream the butter.

Sift in the powdered sugar.

 Cream together the butter and sugar.

 Beat the egg.

Blend in the egg, vanilla, salt and flour.

It will be hard, but try to keep your fingers out of this buttery, soft, fluffy dough.

Flatten the dough into an even layer and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate dough until it’s firm. I left my dough in the fridge overnight and baked the cookies the next morning.

Prepare your work surface and chilled dough.

Roll your dough out on a well-floured surface. I broke my dough into two batches and it worked well for me.

You want the dough to be about 1/4 inch thick. The thickness of the dough at this point will be the same thickness of the baked cookie.

Start cookie cutting.

 Squeeze them in.

This may be my new favorite photo.

  Bake the cookies for about 8 minutes, you want to remove them from the oven before they golden. 

Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the pan before moving them to a cooling rack.

Cooled cookies.

Space out the cookies, getting ready to frost.

Since I went through frosting the cookies earlier, I’ll just share the photos and a quick caption here.

If you want to learn about the eggless royal icing I used or how to marble the cookies, please visit this post.

Outline the cookies.

Flood the inside with pink icing and marble with white icing and a toothpick.

Just be careful that you don’t over-flood the cookies or they will look a bit psychedelic.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. salt
2 ½ cups sifted flour

Directions:
Cream butter. Sift in the powdered sugar and whip with the butter. Blend in egg, vanilla, salt and flour. Chill dough until firm. Roll to ¼” thickness on a well-floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters. Place on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 375° F for 8-10 min. Cookies should not brown. Frost and decorate when cool.

I heart these cookies.

Looking good and tasting good, what more could you want?

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Sugar Cookie Sunday

Today started in a sweet way and has only gotten sweeter.

French toast with fried bananas, coconut butter and maple syrup. Oh my word, this is the way to eat French toast.

Yesterday I made both sugar cookie and chocolate sugar cookie dough. I’ll do separate posts about those recipes later but for now am going to jump into the cookies.

Short and… sweet!

First I baked the vanilla sugar cookies.I subbed vanilla extract for the almond extract due to allergies at schoo.

After that, the chocolate sugar cookies were baked.

While I was baking the sweet cookies, my sweetie was putting together the new wardrobe we bought at IKEA yesterday.

  He had some help.

Back to the kitchen.

As far as icing goes, I couldn’t find meringue powder so went with an Eggless Royal Icing recipe. I made one batch of plain white icing and then a quadruple batch of hot pink icing.

Eggless Royal Icing

• 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 2 tsp. milk
• 2 tsp. corn syrup
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
• food coloring

1. Using an electric mixer, mix the powdered sugar and milk until smooth.
2. Add the corn syrup, vanilla and food coloring and beat on low speed until very smooth and glistening.

You could easily substitute another milk if you want to go with a vegan version.

Milk and powdered sugar.

Before the final mix. Not pink enough.

That’s it!

Space out the cooled cookies.

Outline with the thick royal icing.

Flood the inside of the cookies with a slightly thinner royal icing.

Add spots of white icing and marble with a toothpick.

Aren’t they pretty?

If only my dishes cleaned themselves, that would be sweet. I hope you have a wonderfully sweet Valentine’s Day.

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Healthier Napa Cabbage Salad

Napa cabbage salad is one of my mom’s best potluck dishes. Every time she brings this salad to a picnic, potluck, or party, the bowl comes home empty.

When I was home at Christmas, we went out to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday at a restaurant that specializes in simple dishes made with local ingredients.

While there, I ordered the Napa cabbage salad.

It was delicious.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about this salad but only just now got around to making it.

I tried to make the dish healthier than the original version by reducing or eliminating the oil, butter and sugar, and I think the outcome is superb, if I do say so myself.

 

Makes 6 very large servings

For the greens

• 1 large head Napa cabbage
• 8-10 green onions, chopped

For the crunchies

• 3 tsp. sesame oil
• 1 package ramen noodles, broken
• 3 tbsp. sesame seeds
• 1 cup slivered almonds

For the dressing

• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 4 Tbsp. honey or agave syrup
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

Directions

1. Finely shred the head of cabbage. Toss the green onions and cabbage in a large bowl, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
2. To make the crunchies, toss together the sesame seeds, ramen noodles, almonds and sesame oil until evenly coated. Spread the mixture onto a lined baking sheet and make at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) until the crunchies become golden in color. Stir every now and then to ensure even toasting.
3. To make the dressing: In a small saucepan, heat vinegar, oil, honey, sugar, and soy sauce. Bring the mixture to a boil, let boil for 1 minute. Remove the pan from the heat and let cool. Pour the cooled dressing into a glass jar and refrigerate until ready to use. Before using, shake the dressing well.
4. To serve, combine dressing, crunchies, and cabbage, tossing to evenly distribute the ingredients. Serve immediately.
5. If you are planning on eating this over a couple of days, just toss together a little bit of the crunchies, greens and dressing right before you want to eat.

Enjoy.

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1+1=2

Today I asked my students to journal about their favorite things to draw.

One student from Hungary informed me that he liked to draw “army stuff.”

He then drew “a special picture just for you.”

Clearly, in his mind, 1+1=2.

Unfortunately, he’s not alone in his reasoning.

It makes me sad to know that this is what much of the world associates with the USA.

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Dare I say?

Dare I say, but it is feeling like spring around here.

To my family and friends still covered in snow, I’m sorry.

The air today had that early spring scent to it.

Sebastian and I first noticed it yesterday while out on our walk.

It smells like fresh soil and new green life.

Even my daredevil cats noticed the change in the air.

Today was a normal busy day at school.

The kids were all excited to share what they did over the long weekend. I had students in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium this weekend. All of their travel talk made me want to skip town for a week or so.

I think I may have made a new record at school today. I cried over not one, but two books while reading to my students. Ok, I guess saying I cried is too dramatic, I just got teary eyed.

Seeing a teacher get emotional helps develop empathy in children, right?

We’ve been reading Bridge to Terabithia and just got to the sad part. I wasn’t the only one with wet eyes. Nor was I a member of the only gender with wet eyes.

Lunch today was a salad of lamb’s lettuce, cooked quinoa, cucumbers, smoked tofu, red peppers, cherry tomatoes and balsamic glaze. It was good.

I tutored after school then came home for a quick snack.

Whole grain English muffin with peanut butter and 1/2 a banana.

Fun fact: When I lived in Kenya, I survived off of bread, peanut butter and bananas. Kenya’s a hard place to be a vegetarian, especially on a student meal plan.

This afternoon I ran to Bonn to buy a new hand mixer and order a couple of books. While on the underground, I witnessed something very scary.

We were pulling away from a stop when the lady in front of me turned around with terrified eyes and pointed out the window. She didn’t speak English or German but her eyes said it all.

I looked out the window to see a lady, probably about 40 years old, sitting in the station with her shopping bags. She looked like she had been waiting for the tram like anyone else.

The only difference was that she was not moving to get on. Her eyes were wide open but rolled in the back of her head. Her head was leaning awkwardly against the wall and seat back. She looked like she was mildly convulsing, fists gripped.

The train was pulling away so I couldn’t jump out to try to help. It was a terrible feeling to pull away and leave this lady in need of help all alone.

I tried getting an old man I had been talking to to call an ambulance. He had no clue why I was suddenly panicking but a young German girl said she could help me even though she hadn’t seen the lady. Unfortunately, there was no reception in the underground.

We got off two stops later and ran to the police station. The police did what they could and called an ambulance. I just hope they arrived in time to help the lady.

I’ve had her image in my mind all night.

She was just waiting for a tram like everyone else.

Please, wherever you are, say a prayer for her health and safety.

Now go out and hug and kiss your loved ones.

I hope my friends and family, an ocean apart, feel my love tonight.

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Easy Earring Organizer

When I first moved to Germany almost 3 years ago, I came with 4 manageable pairs of dangly earrings.

Before you ask, yes, I now only have 3.5 of those original sets and also, yes, that is the top of a red pencil eraser which is used to back the earring in the bottom left corner.

Well, over the past almost 3 years, my dangly earring collection has grown to a messy pile of tangled hoops, beads and jewels.

Not anymore!

In about 5 minutes today, I solved that dangling disaster by repurposing a few unused items which were already hanging around the apartment. (Get it? Hanging around.)

To make this chicken wire earring organizing frame, you will simply need:

• 1 picture frame with cardboard backing
• chicken wire
• feline assistant, optional

Please allow me to be sidetracked for a moment to share a funny story about that picture frame.

3 Christmases ago, Sebastian and I left the cats to the care of a helpful lady in our apartment named Barbara. We were so thankful for her and her willingness to care for the cats while we were away in Berlin. Nice, lonely, bored, thoughtful lady.

We returned 2 weeks later to find that our apartment had been entirely reorganized and decorated in our absence.

She moved every single pantry item, book, pillow, and pan to where she though it was better suited. There was not one item, big or small, that was in the same place as we had left it.

I had spent 5 months refusing to put a nail into the walls only to return and find 1 clock, 2 calendars, 1 pack of post-it notes, and 4 pictures hanging by nails in my previously unpenetrated walls.

The Cat on a Clothesline cut out from a newspaper picture above is one of the remaining pieces of art which Barbara thought was so well suited for us.

Anyways, back to the project at hand, you need an unused frame.

1. First up, disassemble the frame, removing the glass completely.
2. Flip the kitty picture over to reveal a white piece of paper against the cardboard backing.
3. Wrap the chicken wire around the cardboard and place back into the frame.
4. Push down the tabs to hold the backing in place and there you have it.
5. Hang up your dangly earrings.

If you really care about symmetry, just take more care in straightening out the chicken wire. I didn’t bother as it will always be covered anyways.

 A simple solution to tangled trouble.

Although this earring organizer is pretty awesome, it doesn’t come near the wonderful gift I received from one of my students this week.

Every time I open this jewelry box, I think my heart might just melt a little.

I love you, too.

In other news, today was a beautiful day in Bonn.

To take advantage of the warmer weather and sunshine, Sebastian suggested going on a walk today.

We walked down to one of my favorite places, Muffendorf.

I didn’t take very many photos today, but here are a few of the small details we stumbled on.

Once back, I made fresh juice and a late lunch/ early dinner.

2 old clementines, an orange, beet, ginger and 3 carrots.

The makeshift mid-day double meal was a grilled cheese with lamb’s lettuce and smoked cheese.

Left-over creamy avocado sauce on the side for dipping.

I was still feeling hungry so cut a couple slices of French farmer’s baguette and topped it with the final bit of avocado spread and fresh tomatoes.

Fresh and satisfying.

My plans for tonight involve watching How I Met Your Mother and sipping tea.

There is a chance that popcorn and hot chocolate may be included at some point as well.

To all you in the US, have fun at your Super bowl parties today.

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