Unless cooking with my roommate or my east coast fellow middle child-er, I also have a tendency to go of course when following a recipe. When cooking with my sister, this usually ends in disaster (proof: when baking soda is in a recipe one should refrain from adding extra lemon juice or any form of acid). Still riddled with a serious case of anti-concentration on the paper requiring major research, and after reading about the huge ridiculous ness that is happening on the streets of Toronto, I was feeling like I needed to do something that wasn't writing about civil war....so I decided that I would make an attempt at baking.
The attempted required that I turn on and make the gas oven with three temperatures function. (the last attempt ended in charred food) and Me and the oven have kept our distance since then. However, it was a success!
I started with the goal of making lemon poppy seed cake (after all I am in the land of Makos or poppyseed lovers). I found a good recipe and wrote down what I needed, but forgot to write down these things in Hungarian (fatal error, FATAL ERROR). Then I got dressed and headed off to drop my recycling off at the public depository, and get the ingredients for the market. As I did not write down the proper words, I was completely disoriented at the grocery store trying to translate the German or Hungarian words on the baking package. (by the way, Spar is a German company, so if something hasn't been manufactured for Hungarian audiences, the label, or at least the KEY word can usually be found in German). This is not the case for anything mass produced for Eastern European mouths (and therefore languages on packaging are Hungarian, Slovak, Polish, Romania and Czech). I have also seen the odd Russian label as well. On that note, There is still Russian in the metros too...on the trains themselves...
Anyway, the brain chaos that occurred when attempting to find ingredients meant that my basket and shopping bag ended up with a box of cocoa (in hindsight, I have no idea why), a bag of corn flakes (again, why is beyond me), baking powder, vanilla sugar, some cordial, some club soda to go with the cordial, and a fresh basil plant. (to buy fresh herbs requires that you buy the whole plant). When I left the store I realized I I forgot the lemon and the poppyseeds. But seeing and purchasing the basil (or Baslikom) plant made me instantly think of pizza.
So, that is what I made. Starting with the dough....a la Jamie Oliver.... :)
Below is the photo gallery of this epic event.
These are not all the ingredients for the pizza. but I also made some cookies to at least justify why I bought Kakao, Vanilla Sugar and Corn Flakes. (yes, I put corn flakes and oates to make cocoa-oatmeal-flake-raisin cookies. (while I was waiting for the dough to rise).Back to the dough:
this is the first step (flour 250g and salt). This is my scale. It is okay with large quantities, but as soon as anything under 100g is required it's precision and accuracy is seriously questionable....Then you add the yeast mixture of oil, salt, sugar and instant yeast. One is required to make this in a 'jug'. I used the only large class I have, kilkenny beer glass (yum!).
To spare everyone of another picture, the next step is form a hole. put the liquid in the hole and stir. let rise. this is when I stopped reading and went it solo. Then I turned on the oven...to prepare myself and it for the pizza....This is a photo of my hand lifting up the base of the oven....where I will have to turn on the gas and strike a match (I realized that maybe if i got longer matches, I could use that long whole to stick the match in and avoid lifting (and well, removing this as I couldn't get it back in without causing the flame to burn out.
There is no action photo of me turning it on with the match as I felt that holding a camera with gas running and me holding a match was not the greatest of ideas....but here is the end product (do you see me in the background?):
So with the oven on, I decided to make some cookies (okay, actually first I read some articles for the MRP, then got bored and decided to attempt cookies (my oven was on...afterall...)...But here is the end product (NO burns! no charring!)
(sorry, There are no photos of the process as I was completly consumed with the dough...and trying to remember why I wanted to make cookies....
I also decided to take the plastic off my Basilkom....and I put it on my table...I think it makes the kitchen less white! (and look! my cookies...this is soooooo Home and Country....well in a 'I am living in a student flat I bought a plant I hope that it will survive and thrive kind of way....). Since this photo was taken two cookies have also mysteriously disappeared....
In case anyone forgot about the purpose of my post:Here is the final Pizza product! (yum!).
Now I have exactly 2.5 hours to focus on writing....please wish me luck!!!P.S.
You are probably wondering why I wouldn't have just gone out to explore the city....you know, because I am here for such a short time and all...well..I couldn't go out in case I had a wave of concentration, and the guilt of leaving would have just been too much...apparenlty the guilt of baking wasn't as powerful.....
that is the beauty of procrastination...it makes no logical sense, unless you are the person who is procrastinating...and with this, I present you the final glimpse of this procrastinator's day:
you kill me. Great job on the pizza and cookies. You are brave with that oven! I will write more later..Im on a bit of a concentration sprint...MRP MRP MRP!
ReplyDeleteFOCUS. You are almost done!!!
ReplyDeletebut like I told stef...I first hesitated when I was cutting up mushrooms...then I remembered that I liked them. and it was you two that hated them. lol. You are her and pizza are forever enshrined in my brain. I miss you :)