Rats and flies are such great helpers! April Fool's!
What are great helpers, though, is yeast. Isn't it amazing that yeast in the air all around us can be farmed to help to rise dough? Tonight I used my new sourdough starter, now 8 days old, to make the pizza dough. I also baked arabic (pita) bread. I made 3 pizzas. Two are cheese and one is parsley pesto.
Garden math: I made 3 pizzas. Each pizza had 8 slices. How many total slices of pizza were there? There are 4 people in the family. How many do each of us get? Do you think we ate it all?
Cob-weaver loves math problems like this. Her favorite operation is division. Equal division. Fairness. She says that is why she needs to make so many cookies, so she can practice division. My favorite operation is multiplication. Multiplication is magical to me. It makes me think of fairies with magic wands, or plants and seeds. Mosquito loves addition. What is your favorite operation? I learned today that our favorite operation relates to our temperament (a fancy word for personality).* That's neat.
Pizza Dough
- Use about 1/2 cup of sourdough starter. Add flour and water to make a sponge. A sponge is the consistency of really wet batter. Cover the bowl with a clean towel. Make this in the morning and let rise, all day if possible (or set out the night before to work overnight for cooking in the morning). This is the no-knead method where you let the yeast do all the work. Do not let go more than 12 hours. I did mine at the last minute (of course), so it only sat for an hour before I made the dough.
- Add enough flour to make a dough that can be handled. Add a pinch of salt and other herbs you like rolled into your dough, like oregano, basil, or powdered garlic. You can also put in cornmeal for a heartier crust. Roll out into a pizza dough.
- Bake at 425°F for 8 minutes.
- Add toppings.
- Bake at 425°F for another 8 minutes.
- Slice and Enjoy.
Arabic Bread
- Using the same dough. At step 2 above, after making the dough, form it into balls, bigger than a golf ball, but smaller than a tennis ball. What kind of ball is that? Place on a well floured board and cover.
- Roll out each ball. First pressing down from the center with your hands. Then roll out from the center making sure your rolling pin does not go over the edge of the dough and pinch it. Keep it thick than a quarter inch. Roll out to a small plate size.
- Cover the unbaked pita with a clean towel.
- After cooking your pizzas, heat the over to 500°F with a baking pan on the bottom rack (the pan must be hot). Remove any upper racks, or put them at the top setting to get them out of the way.
- When the oven is hot, quickly and gently toss your bread onto the hot baking sheet. I can fit 2-3 at a time. They should not touch one another and hopefully will land flat (this gets easier with practice).
- Close oven quickly and bake for 4 minutes.
- Quickly remove your puffed arabic bread with tongs and cool.
- Add more dough until you've finished cooking all of them. Make sure to keep the oven hot by closing it quickly each time.
Parsley pesto
This is made just like basil pesto. You can use basil or substitute parsley or arugula. We have lots of parsley, so I usually make pesto like this. As always, my quantities are relative to taste. Sometimes I use bone broth with the oil to help blend the pesto. This cuts down on the amount of oil used. I often omit the parmesan if I don't have any.
- Use a big bunch of parsley, removing thicker stems.
- Add olive oil, pine nuts or walnuts, garlic clove to taste, salt to taste, and small chunk parmesan cheese to taste. Use just enough olive oil to make it blend. If you want to cut down on the oil, used bone or vegetable broth.
- Blend until smooth.
- Freeze leftovers in ice cube trays.
🐞Farmer Ladybug
*The Four Temperaments by Rudolf Steiner
Yum! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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