Bigger Bolder Baking: Crazy Dough

I have been following Gemma from Bigger Bolder Baking for a while now and her videos and recipes are amazing.

Yesterday I came across her crazy dough. FANTASTIC! I made one batch and made, naan bread, cinnamon rolls, baggles and soft breadrolls with it. The outcome was amazing.

We made bagels today to go with the 'vegan smoked salmon'. The recipe we used today was the one in our cookery book, here is an alternative one made with tomato and the other carrot.
To make it easier to cut the strips thinly, top and tail a carrot, with a vegetable slicer slice thinly, then steam until soft. At this point you can then put in a dish and pour over the marinade.

We made a soup with fennel, spinach a couple of potatoes (to thicken) and an onion. Simple but very tasty. To finish we added a little cream, some fennel fronts, a fennel flower and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

Crazy Dough is one master dough recipe — that's as easy as it gets — that can be turned into endless variations of breads, rolls, pretzels, pizza, and more!Crazy Dough is one master dough recipe — that's as easy as it gets — that can be turned into endless variations of breads, rolls, pretzels, pizza, and more!

Course: Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch

Cuisine: American 

Author: adapted from kitchennostalgia.com

Ingredients

·       1/2 cup ( 4floz/120ml) milk

·       1 teaspoon sugar

·       2 teaspoons dry yeast

·       3 1/3 cup (16 1/2 oz/500g) all-purpose flour

·       1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

·       1 1/2 teaspoon salt

·       3/4 cup (6oz/180g) plain yogurt

·       1 whole egg*

Instructions

1.     In a small jug stir together the lukewarm milk, sugar, and yeast. Let stand for 15 minutes until yeast activates. It will become foamy and start expanding.

2.     In a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3.     In a separate bowl combine the yogurt and the egg.

4.     Once the yeast has activated add the yeast mixture and yogurt-egg mixture to the dry ingredients. Using a fork stir everything together until it forms a loose, sticky dough.

5.     If the dough is too dry, add a little bit of milk or water. If it is too soft, add just a little bit of flour.

6.     Once all the ingredients are combined gently knead/ fold the dough together until it forms a rough ball.

7.     Cover the dough tightly with cling wrap and a tea towel and place in a warm spot to proof for 2 hours.

8.     Once the dough has risen it should be about double in size. From here you can take this crazy all-purpose dough and make it into any of the following things!

9.     Cheesy loaf, pizza, naan bread, savory stuffed roll, classic cinnamon rolls, pretzels, jalapeno & cheese stuffed dinner rolls, and braided Nutella loaf.

10.  Keep it in your fridge for up to 4 days. You can freeze it, too.

So today, we made a batch to make bagels to go with the Vegan 'smoked' Salmon out of my first recipe book.

We have these to go with the soup..

We made a little conveyer belt so that the freshly made bagels were put together swiftly.

 We agreed it was a very tasty meal.

Rurie, Kim, June, Mary and Hiroe waiting to be able to start their meal

Message from Meghan in the US

Meghan was a loyal member of from Spade to Plate whilst they were visiting Cambridge last year. I say 'was' but it looks like she still is from afar.  She follows the blog and feels she is temporarily back in the UK. Today she sent me a simple message and a lovely picture;


"You’ve inspired us today 🥰"

Half term, a small group but lots of variety

Today we had a couple of cancellations due to coughs and colds, and some of the regular friends could not make it due to half term.

This did mean however that we could try out some more dishes.

Carmen,  Alice and Karina S came. We started preparing the mushrooms for both the Creamy Mushroom Soup 

and the mushroom mini pies. Both recipes came from our 2nd cookery book.

A couple of weeks ago we made a pear custard pie, this time we used the same recipe but added apples rather than pears. Lovely too.

As we had some puff pastry and apple left we made some apple flappen (also in book 2, demonstrated by Mark)   

Tortillas from Honduras

Today we were lucky that John and Lolita came to visit us. They brought with them the authentic flour to make tortillas (we used flour from the blue corn) with black beans, butternut squash, guacamole,  and tomatillo salsa. We also had a  beet, cabbage and carrot salad to go with that.

Rurie, Sayaka and Mary tasting the tortilla

Rurie Making her first tortilla

Marie making her first tortilla

Lolita mixing the flour with water

June making her tortilla

and now it is time to put them in the griddle

Butternut squash, beet,cabbage and carrot salad, Black beans and tortillas

Lolita in action

This is how it is really done

The end result, gorgeous with tomatillo salsa

A seasonal meal - last of the runner beans and courgettes

We started with a lettuce and courgette soup as the lettuce that was harvested a couple of days ago was so large, we used most of it to add to our soup. Ted, our allotment friend had some courgettes that needed using so making a lovely velvety soup was just the ticket.

  

Preparing for the Runner Bean Quinoa Salad with Maple Citrus Dressing. We changed the recipe a bit and felt it needed 1/3 less beans and the juice of one tangerine as well as the segments of one more tangerine. The roasted sliced almonds were really nice and added texture and taste. If you want this recipe to be vegan just omit the feta cheese, to be honest it did not add too much extra to the dish.

 

The dessert made with pears from the tree is the garden was delicious. Simple and quick to make but definitively a winner.

Melenddra peeling pears

    

Chickpea, tomato and peanut stew with cooked pear in orange and cherry sauce

This week with the Victoria Homes group we made raspberry mousse using aquafaba (chickpea water) With the left over chickpeas and the tomatoes from the allotment, I found this recipe it is a West African inspired stew.

beautifully diced onions and red pepper by Sayaka and Hwiwoun

The stew with a freshly steamed broccoli and nasturtium flowers

T

The Peanut butter we make from scratch as that way we are sure that there is no palm oil incorporated.
It is simple and quick to make so why not?

We picked the broccoli out of the allotment to have with the rice and stew.

As a desert we made some stewed pear.

Lu, Carmen and Cortney stuffing the flowers with cream cheese

In the end we started the meal 1/2 earlier than normal as it was so quickly to make. The end result was a tasty and satisfying meal perfect for a wet and autumnal day.

Butternut Squash Curry with flat bread

Due to illness only 2 members turned up today,  so as a matter of precaution, I chose a menu full of vitamin C, anti oxidants and antibiotic properties,  Garlic, Nasturtiums, Tomatoes, Onions to name but a few.

We turned a lovely Butternut squash and the kale (well massaged with oil) into a curry which we had with rice and a flat bread (as per my 2nd cookery book)
   

All the vegetables from the allotment that we harvested and were left, were turned into a salad. Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Carrots, Dill, lettuces, edible flowers borage, cornflowers, marigold and to top it up nasturtium leaves and the flowers stuffed with cream cheese.  Yumm!