Savoury Gifflar

When I was making the gifflar a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't help but thnk how similar they were to a pre-rolled pizza slice...which got me thinking "why not do a savoury, pizza inspired one?". Last weekend I did a trial run on Christmas dinner, which is going to be beef wellington, and I had some Prosciutto ham (I had to google how to spell that), some mushrooms, and a bit of flavour inspiration. I needed a snack for a race, so I made a batch of these.

Really happy with the flavours. It was a bit tricky making them look neat, and next time I would chop the mushrooms finer, and maybe even do the filling after I've cut the wedges, so I can avoid the edges, and get a better seal. I avoided this with this batch, but some cheese (either inside, or sprinkled on top) would not go amiss, and would add to the "izza" vibe, giving you a true Italian/Nordic crossover!

Savoury Gifflar - Recipe

Dough Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour
• 10g salt
• 150ml milk
• 10g fast action yeast
• 3 large eggs
• 50g room temperature butter
• ~20-50ml of warm water

1) Warm the milk in a microwave to ~40'C (lukewarm)

2) Stir the yeast into the milk with a fork, and leave for 10 minutes until it's got a layer of bubbles on top

3) Place the flour and salt in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment

4) Mix the eggs into the developed yeast mixture

5) Pour the yeast mixture into the flour, and begin to mix

6) When the dough forms, if it looks a little dry add the water sparingly until it softens the dough

7) Add the butter to the dough in parts, allowing each chunk to combine into the dough

8) Mix the dough for 8-10 minutes on a medium speed, until the dough starts to clean the sides of a bowl.

9) Transfer to an oiled bowl, and leave to prove until tripled in size. While it is proving, make the fillings

Fillings

• 200g button mushrooms
• Sprig of fresh thyme
• 50g butter
• 100ml white wine

• 1 pack (approx 90-100g) of Prosciutto ham

• 50g butter
• 40g tomato puree
• 1tsp garlic salt
• 1tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1) For the mushrooms, place 50g of butter in a frying pan over a medium heat

2) Finely chop the  mushrooms, and place in the frying pan

3) Fry for 5-6 minutes until soft

4) Add the wine, and continue to cook on a medium heat until all the moisture is absorbed into the mushrooms

5) Leave to one side to cool

6) Melt the other 50g of butter in a hetproof bowl

7) Stir in the tomato puree, garlic salt and Worcestershire sauce

8) Tear the Prosciutto ham into small pieces

Assembly

• 1 beaten egg, mixed with a litle milk
• Sesame seeds

1) Knock back the proved dough, and split into 3 parts (approx 300g each)

2) Roll each part into a circle approximately 30cm across

3) Spread 1/3rd of the tomato mixture over the circle

4) Sprinkle 1/3rd of both the mushrooms and Prosciutto ham even over the circle

5) Cut the circle into 8 "pizza slices"

6) Roll each pizza slice from the wide end, forming a croissant-like shape.

7) Place these on a baking sheet (you'll need 2) lined with baking parchment or silicone sheets

8) Repeat for all 3 parts of dough, making 24 gifflar in total

9) Lightly brush each with water, and leave to prove for 45 minutes

10) Pre-heat the oven to 160-170'C

11) Brush each gifflar with the egg/milk mixture, and sprinkle sesame seed over them

12) Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden

13) Remove to a wire rack to cool

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Pizza Dough

It's easy to forget that pizza is a bread dough...and it's actually incredibly easy to make, though a bit of patience will give you the best results.

This is a recipe I worked on a couple of years ago (before I was writing everything up on here). I found a bag of the dough sitting in the freezer...sadly it was no longer viable, however it spurred me on to make up a new batch from my ancient hand-written notes. The base of the recipe was to try and replicate a Dominos pizza base, my personal favourite. I spent a few evenings reading up on the subject...Dominos are obviously fairly secretive about the exact composition, however I did find out;

1. You need very high protein flour
2. You want a slow prove
3. You can freeze the dough (and this is how most Dominos receive their dough)
4. Polenta = Cornmeal = maize flour
5. The hotter, the better
6. My oven has a pizza-specific setting

The core ingredients are pretty simple, and this recipe will make 2 x 14" thin crust pizzas. For the toppings, just go wild. I use a jar of pre-made pizza topping, and then throw various things on (the photos here are chorizo, mushroom, onion and cheese).

The base recipe is here...I have modified it, and also turned it into sensible numbers! There are a couple of bits of specific kit you need;
1) A proving tub that fits in your fridge. I use a Really Useful Box that just happens to be the right size for proving a 500g flour batch of dough (you've probably seen it in photos before). The other item is a pizza baking tray...these typically have holes over the bottom to allow the moisture to escape, and for the base to crisp up.

Pizza Dough  - Recipe

Ingredients

• 500g very strong white flour (I used a 15% protein flour)
• 320g warm water (~40'C max)
• 10g caster sugar
• 10g yeast
• 10g salt
• 25g olive oil

1) Mix the sugar and yeast into the warm water with a fork, and leave for 5-10 minutes until it begins to bubble

2) Place the flour, salt and olive oil into a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment

3) Begin to mix, and slowly pour the water/yeast mixture in to form a dough

4) Mix on a medium speed for 10 minutes, until you have a smooth, soft, stretchy and glossy dough

5) Oil a container, and place the dough in there

6) Place in the fridge to prove for 24 hours. This is important, as you want a really soft, stretchy dough. It should roughly triple in size.

Assembly

• Polenta / Cornmeal / Maize Flour (to roll in)
• Toppings to taste;

• Tomato sauce
• Meat
• Vegetables
• Cheese
• Anything really!

Note - the dough recipe makes 2 batches, each of about 425g. You can freeze the dough, so after you've knocked it back place one ball in a plastic bag, and freeze. To use this, get it out in the morning and let it defrost naturally (no microwaves!). It should soften, and begin to expand again...then you can knock it back and use it normally.

1) Pre-heat the oven to 250'C. My oven has a pizza setting, where the base of the oven is heated up to make the base crispy (and you then put the pizza right at the bottom)

2) On a lightly oiled surface, knock the dough back, and split in half

3) Using a rolling pin, start rolling out a circle to match the pizza baking tray. It should be springy, so you'll also need to hand stretch it

4) Once it's to size, scatter polenta across the work surface, and press the dough into it on both sides

5) Place the pizza on the baking tray

6) Top as you see fit (traditionally tomato sauce, toppings, then cheese)

7) Place in the oven for 8-10 minutes

8) Slice and eat

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Irish Soda-Bread

This was borderline panic-baking. I was hunting through the cupboards, looking for something to satiate a massive carb-craving (I get those a lot, especially when I'm under-fuelled for a race). as always I have plenty of flour, eggs, butter and sugar, but nothing was to hand and ready to eat.

Once again I attacked Mary Berrys Baking Bible, and spotted a recipe for Irish soda-bread...a quick check showed I had all the ingredients to hand, and once again it was a "throw it all in a bowl", so nice and fast.

The trick with soda-breads and scones is to work the mixture as little as possible...you almost don't want it smooth, but a bunch of lumps barely held together. I served this with some caramelised onions and sun-dried tomatoes, and it went down very well indeed!

Irish Soda-Bread - Recipe

• Pre-heat oven to 180'C
• Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat (or baking parchment)

Ingredients

• 400g strong white flour
• 50g rolled oats
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (about 3-4g)
• 5g salt
• 150g yoghurt (I used fat-free greek yoghurt)
• 150g milk
• ~50ml warm water
• Sunflower oil (optional)

1) Put the flour, oats, salt and bicarbonate in a large mixing bowl. Stir it with a whisk to combine them.

2) Add the milk and yoghurt, and start to gently mix in with a spatula

3) Add the water until the mixture just comes together as a lumpy ball

4) (optional/tip) Lightly grease your hands with sunflower oil, and form the dough into a ball (the oil stops it sticking to your hands)

5) Place the ball of dough on the prepared baking sheet, and press it down slightly

6) Cut a deep cross in the top with a sharp knife

7) Bake for 30 minutes, the flip over and bake for another 10 minutes

8) Remove to a wire rack to cool

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Pulled Pork Doughnuts

Bit of a high concept one here. I'm not entirely sure when I started thinking about it, but it's been bouncing round in the back of my head for a while now. It's a pretty simple idea...take your traditional pulled pork bun (or if you're a fan of the Asian side of things Cha Siu Bao), and then rather than steaming of baking them, deep-fry them ala a doughnut. Simples?

The logistics are a little more involved...I've never made pulled pork before, and after a bit of digging found a recipe, only to find it takes 5 hours in the oven! This was definitely not one that was going to be done in a single evening. I also decided to make my own barbecue sauce, and again spent some time looking this up. I ended up doing the pork and the sauce on a Sunday, then the dough, assembly and frying on the Monday evening. Fortunately it a a pleasant, warm day, and the dough proved quickly (though I helped the second prove with a "proving draw" oven set-up)

The volume here provide waaay more pulled pork (I did the entire 2½kg pork shoulder joint...my local supermarket had almost exactly the cut the recipe called for, and it's not like it won't get eaten!) and barbecue sauce than you need...no bad thing! The dough volume makes 12 buns, though with the pulled pork and sauce volumes you could probably make 30'ish.

Pulled Pork Doughnuts - Recipe

Pulled Pork - Recipe

I used this recipe from the BBC Good Food website, and won't worry about writing it out again. There were a lot of new flavours in there for me (liquid smoke? I now have a bottle of it). I struggled to find the onion salt...you can also get onion granules which can be mixed with plain salt (1 parts granules, 3 parts salt) for the same effect.

Searing the pork was...interesting. The joint was bigger than my largest frying pan, so there was some delicate balancing going on. The next challenge was that my roasting tin is wide than my tin foil, so there was a bit of ad-hoc origami going on to join 2 sheets together...I realised this was pretty important, as otherwise over the 5 hour cooking time the meat would go dry if the moisture could escape, so a good seal was vital.

It actually came out really well, and was just falling apart when I was attacking it with a fork. I stored it in 2 large tubs in the fridge, and 12 doughnuts used less than half.

Barbecue Sauce Recipe

Again, I headed to the trustworthy BBC Good Food website. I wanted something sweet and sticky, but with a good flavour, as I was unsure how much of it I'd be able to get into the buns. This recipe certainly has a kick to it!

Again, the ingredients list was a bit of a learning experience. I had no idea what Passata was, I didn't have some of the spices, and chipotle paste is new to me as well (and I also butcher the pronunciation). Actually making it, once I had all the ingredients assembled, was pretty simple, and I did it in the extremely long time I had spare while the pork was cooking. Once it was cooked, I let it cool, and then decanted into small kilner jars to store...I ended up using under half the recipe for the 12 buns, and I was also using it on some meals to add some depth.

Dough Recipe

Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour
• 10g salt
• 15g fast action yeast
• 200ml full-fat milk
• 2 large eggs (room temperature)
• 60g butter (room temperature)

1) Warm the milk in a microwave to ~40'C (tepid)

2) Place the flour, salt, yeast and eggs in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment

3) Begin to mix, and slowly add the milk to form a dough

4) Mix for 4-5 minutes, until the dough begins to smooth

5) Add the butter to the bowl

6) Mix for another 8-10 minutes, until you have a smooth, glossy and stretchy dough

7) Place in a slightly oiled container, and leave to prove somewhere warm for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

Assembly

(this is where it gets a little fiddly!)
 

1) While the dough is proving, make 12 balls of pulled pork. These want to be approximately 3 - 3½cm in diameter.

2) Pull the balls apart, and add ½tsp of barbecue sauce into them, gently then reforming them

3) Leave the balls to chill in the fridge to firm up

4) Take the proved dough, and knock back

5) Split into 12 equal parts by weight (my dough weighed 880g, so each part was 70-75g)

6) Roll each dough part out into an oval approximately 10cm across

7) Take a chilled meat ball, and wrap the dough around it. Pinch the edge shut, ensuring there is as little air as possible.

You want to be quite diligent pinching the dough together, so ensure the meat is fully encapsulated, and as even as possible all the way round the meat ball. Smooth it off gently.

8) Place the balls on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Brush them with a little oil if you are worried that they may touch when proving again.

9) Leave to prove for 30-45 minutes (I used an oven with a temperature probe at ~40'C for this). They should expand a bit, but not double their size.

10) Set up your deep fat fryer, with sunflower or vegetable oil. You want the temperature at 180'C.

11) Prepare a "landing zone" for your cooked doughnuts. I had a cooling rack with a kitchen cloth underneath to catch errant oil and flour. You'll also want a flour sprinkler, and some heatproof tools.

12) Fry the doughnuts 2 at a time. You don't want more than that, or the oil will get too cool, and you'll get greasy doughnuts. I was carefully fine-tuning the shape before they went in, but didn't have any splits.

The cooking time is 3 minutes, and I was flipping them at 1 minute, 2 minutes and 2½ minutes.

13) Remove the doughnuts from the fryer to the landing zone, and sprinkle with flour to finish.

These are delicious warm...

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Pork, Apple and Onion Sausage Rolls

I've been doing a fair bit of baking, but mostly doing some favourites...cycling season is now in full force, so I have a little less time  to spend in the kitchen. These sausage rolls came out of a batch of cooking I did for my cycling club for a training day...I wanted a savoury that would appeal to the masses, but was a little different. It's (once again) classic flavours, and after doing the first batch I reckoned they were worth a bit of refining and documenting.

When I did the first batch a lot of juices came out of the filling...obviously sausagemeat has a fair amount of fat in there, however the apple also added a lot of water, so for the second batch I wringed (wrang?) a lot of the water out. I'm in 2 minds about this...the filling was definitely dryer and firmer, however I think that perhaps some of the flavour was lost. Maybe a gentle heating to boil off the water while retaining the vital flavours?

Pork, Apple and Onion Sausage Rolls - Recipe

Rough Puff Pastry

This recipe uses a batch of my fast rough-puff pastry. You can make this up, then chill it while you are preparing the fillings

Filling Ingredients

• 450g sausagemeat (I used some basic stuff, as I was going to add lots of flavours)
• 3 medium-sized braeburn apples
• 2 onions
• 20g butter
• 1tbsp sunflower oil
• 10g soft brown sugar

1) Place the butter and oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat

2) Peel and slice the onions, and add to the frying pan

3) Sprinkle the sugar over the onions

4) Cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, for ~20 minutes, until the onions are well caramelised

5) Place to one side to cool

5) Peel, core and roughly grate the apples

6) Place the grated apple on a clean kitchen cloth

7) Roll and wring the kitchen cloth, to remove the excess water from the apple

8) Place the sausagemeat in a large bowl

9) Add the cooled onion, and grated apple

10) Thoroughly mix with your hands

Assembly

• 1 beaten egg

1) Pre-heat the oven to 190'C

2) Line a large baking sheet with baking parchment

3) Take the chilled pastry, and split in half

4) Roll each half out into a rectangle approx 20cm x 50cm (you can use a pizza wheel to neaten the edges)

5) Using a pastry brush, brush some beaten egg down the middle of the rolled pastry longways

6) Split the filling in half, and place an even strip down the middle of each piece of pastry, on top of the strip of beaten egg

7) Brush one side of each of the pieces of pastry, and fold over the filling

8) Repeat for the other side, forming 2 long sausages

9) Cut each sausage into 8 even-sized pieces (for 16 in total)

10) Cut 2 diagonal grooves in the top of each piece to form a simple decoration

11) Place the pieces on the baking sheet, spaced evenly

12) Brush each with beaten egg, aiming to cover all the edges of the pastry to help seal them

13) Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown, crisp and well puffed

14) Remove to a wire rack to cool

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Chicken, Bacon and Mushroom Mini-Pies

These were a classic cycling-season transportable snack. I've been doing a few pies here and there, normally as loaf-shapes, as they are good to slice. I did these in muffin tins for a bit of a change. the filling was dictated by what was on cheap in the supermarket (in this case chicken and bacon)...and then I whipped up a simple white sauce to bind it all together. I used hot-water crust as it's easy to work, robust, and also one of my favourites.

Chicken, Bacon and Mushroom Mini-Pies

Filling Ingredients

• 350g chicken fillets
• 150g smoked back bacon
• 6 large mushrooms
• 1tbsp sunflower oil
• 50g butter
• 50g plain flour
• ~300ml Milk
• ½tsp mustard powder

1) Place the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat

2) Add the chicken and bacon, and cook until browned

3) Chop and add the mushrooms, stirring in

4) Reduce the heat slightly, and prepare the white sauce

5) Put the butter in a medium pan over a medium heat

6) Once the butter is fully melted, add in the flour and stir vigorously until you have a breadcrumb consistency

7) Slowly start to add the milk, stirring vigorously to remove lumps

8) Keep adding the milk until you have a thick sauce

9) Add the sauce to the chicken mixture, and stir in

10) remove from the heat and allow to cool fully (I spread it over a baking tray on some ice-blocks). While it's cooling, make the pastry, and pre-heat the oven to 190'C

Hot Water Crust Pastry Ingredients

• 450g  plain flour
• 100g strong white flour
• 75g butter
• 100g lard
• 200g water
• Pinch of salt
• Beaten egg (to seal and glaze)

1) Place the flours and salt in a large mixing bowl

2) Rub in the butter until you have fine breadcrumbs

3) Place the water and lard into a small saucepan over a low heat

4) Heat and stir the water until the lard has melted, then turn up the heat until the water boils

5) Pour the lard and water into the flour, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon

6) As soon as it's cool enough to touch, knead the mixture to form a soft dough

7) Working quickly, split the dough into 12 equal parts

8) Using two-thirds of each part, roll it out and line one depression in a 12-hole muffin tin, overlapping the top.

9) Fill each cavity with the cooled filling, ensuring that the overlap at the top is clear

10) Brush some beaten egg around the overlap on each cavity

11) Using the remaining pastry bits, roll out lids and firmly press them on to each cavity

12) Using a circular pastry cutter slightly larger than the muffin cavities, trim away the excess pastry. You can use this to form some decorations for the top of the pies

13) Brush each pie top with beaten egg

14) Place in the oven for 35-40 minutes, until golden

15) Remove to a wire rack to cool

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