Basic Pizza Dough

Pizza is a great party dish, we like to get family and friends together, roll out the dough and have a great pizza party! It is an amazing way to bring love, flavour and ambience in everyone's life.

The way we enjoy making pizza, is a thin base, simple toppings and cook them directly on the floor of the oven. Once the oven is hot, the pizzas cook in minutes; making sure we keep an eye on them and turn them a few times.

Ingredients:

800g strong white flour / 200g ground semolina flour / 1 tablespoon fine sea salt / Half cup of extra virgin olive oil.

2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast or 20g of fresh yeast / 1 x boiled potato, peeled and mashed / 600ml lukewarm water with 30ml milk / Extra flour for dusting.

Sieve flours and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the yeast, milk and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid, now add the finely mashed potato. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, then when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.

Place the ball of dough in a large oiled bowl and oil the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Now remove the dough to a flour dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in gladwrap, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. When using the dough, divide into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas - this amount of dough is ideal to make about eight medium pizzas.

Timing-wise, it's a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 - 20 minutes before you want to cook them. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there's one less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into circles, about 0.5cm thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted baking paper. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with gladwrap, and leave them in the fridge, ensure they are brought back out at least 10 minutes prior to cooking.

Transfer your dough to a flaoured pizza board and add your favourite toppings, finish with a pinch of salt and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Slide onto the oven floor and after a minute move towards the back side of the oven, turning occassionally. Enjoy!!

Basic Bread Dough

Bread can be made in one or two loaves whether white bread, spelt, rye or corn bread takes your fancy. Alternatively, we like to come together and have a bread day where the oven is full of bread, which we then give to friends and family. On our bread making day we enjoy each other's company and a beautiful rustic lunch.

Ingredients:

1 kg strong bread flour / 325ml lukewarmwater /  1 tablespoon fine sea salt / 600ml lukewarm water / 3 x 7g sachets dried yeast or 30g fresh yeast / 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil / Extra flour for dusting.

Place the flour on to a clean surface and make a large well in the centre. Pour half your water into the well, then add your yeast, olive oil, salt and stir with a fork.

Slowly mix in the flour from the inside of the well, ensuring you don't break the walls of the well, as the water will not mix. Continue to bring the flour in to the centre until you get a porridge like consistency, then follow with remaining water. Continue to mix until it becomes full and sticky, then begin to add the flour, making the mix less sticky. Flour your hands and pat and push the dough together with all the remaining flour. (Certain flours need a little more or less water, so feel free to adjust).

This is the fun part; begin to push, fold, kneed and roll the dough around, over and over, until you have a silky and elastic dough. (This can take up to five minutes).

Flour the top of your dough. Put it in a bowl, cover with gladwrap followed by a teatowel and allow it to prove for about half an hour until doubled in size.

Once the dough has doubled in size, knock the air out for 30 seconds by bashing it and squashing it. You can now shape it into your preferred sized loaves, now cover with a teatowel once again and leave to prove for a second time for 30 minutes to an hour until it has doubled in size once more.

Once your oven has pre-heated through for 350c, the fire can be brought down to low burning. Now brush all wood and slow fire to one side of the oven until the fire has died down, now place the bread on the clean oven floor and close the oven door. Leave at 150c for 1 to 1.5 hours and check for a slight golden colour, allow to cool. Enjoy!!

Pesce Misto / Seafood  mix of fresh seafood

8 x prawn cutlets

Calamari and tentacles

Fresh fish fillet, eg: Barramundi cut in to bite size pieces

500 gr  Mussels

300 gr Vongole

300gr or large Sand Crab

 Australian garlic, cut roughly

Parsley, chopped finely, no stalks  

White wine, dry

1 kg Fresh ripened Roma tomato

Salt & pepper, olive oil

Chilli optional

Risotto optional

Accessories: 2 x aluminum pans approx 250mm in diameter and oven proof, tongs, 4 x deep plates, domestic wiz or blender, oven mitt  

Wood fired oven temperature should have been constant for at least for one hour with flame.

Polito wood fired ovens temperature gauge gives you an indication of the inside cooking temperature, eg: for an domestic Donatello oven, 130 degrees reading should be approx 260 degrees.

For the Pesce misto a temperature of 260 degrees is just one you looking for

Let’s make some fresh tomato sauce. Boil water in a pot. Take out the core the tomatoes and slice the ends into a star, place the tomatoes in the boiling water. Once you notice the skin peel away, take the tomatoes and place them into icing water. Peel the skin right off once the tomato has cooled down. Now it’s time to blend them. The consistency can be little chunky.

First you clean the seafood by the right methods, for example with the crab: separate the back shell from the body, with running water washes away the inside until the white flesh is exposed. To cut the crab in 4, place crab on a chopping board, cut it in half. Now cut the crab into quarters.

Once you have the seafood cleaned, portion the seafood in lots of two into the aluminum pans. Enough Salt and pepper, olive oil, garlic, fresh tomato sauce, white wine in all the pan.

Make sure the seafood is covered with the sauce.

Cook the pesce misto for approx 10 to 12 minutes at the 260 degree.  A couple of minute before the end the cooking time, taste the sauce and add the finely chopped parsley. By now the sauce has reduced and the seafood is exposed to the direct heat, so make sure it doesn’t burn.

To plate up the Pesce misto, using a kitchen spoon and tongs. Spoon the mixture in the plate and the crab placed on the top for wow factor. Serve hot with some wood fire bread.

Optional to add chilli and Risotto.

Porchetta al Forno

Rolled pork approx 3 kg from the butcher

Salt

Olive oil

Accessories: probe, roasting  tray, oven mitts

Polito wood fire oven temperatures gauge reading approx 100 degrees. Real temperature inside oven is appox 200 degrees.   

From your local butcher, order a pork loin rolled and seasoned with salt and pepper, sage and garlic. Have the butcher to roll the pork and score the skin.

Before the pork is placed on the roasting tray, hand or brush the olive oil and salt over the skin.

Once the pork is ready and on the roasting tray, place the tray at the rear of the oven and keep the porchetta away from the flame. This is a crucial time to keep an eye out for the skin of the pork as it crackles for it not to burn. The reason for higher temperature is so the skin crackles. The cooking time for the pork is at approx 2 hours.

The real temperature inside the oven should not exceed more than 150 degrees. By keeping the gauge temperature around 70 degrees and  with a small flame, keep rotating the pork as needed.

Using the thermometer insert the probe in the centre and when it reaches internal temperature of 72 degrees take out the pork and rest for 2 hours.

Serving of Porchetta: cut into thick slices of approx 2 cm thick, glad wrap individually and refrigerate.

For the reheating of the pork. Wood fired oven temperature should be at high temperatures eg: 260 degrees, place the slice of pork and with a knob of butter on top in a steel pan or tray. The pork will reheat very quickly, so this keeps it moist and not drying it out. Keep an eye at it, as soon as the skin reaches the best crackle take it out of the oven and serve.

Serving it over cabbage. Fresh cabbage thinly sliced and sautéed in pan with olive oil, balsamic vinegar for red cabbage and white vinegar for white cabbage, salt and pepper.