Scraps!

It’s my old friend 80%, the most useful dough in the book – 80% Hydration Dough. Still mix it in a plastic bowl with an ancient, bent spatula and knead by lifting the dough repeatedly on the spatula and letting it fall back into the bowl under its own weight. No hands in this dough. It then sits around on the work surface for a couple of hours before going in the fridge for at least 24 or, preferably, 48 hours.

I allow 200g for a pizza. So that’s 400g for the two of us but I always knock up at least double that because there are so many other possibilities with this dough.

This time I made 1600g. After 48 hours in the fridge I made pizza. The following day, 4 x 100g burger buns. Day after, I still had 800g, divided it roughly in two and improvised “focaccia”.

I say “roughly divided” because, when you look at the photos, it’s more like two thirds/one third. I put “focaccia” in inverted commas because some people get very shirty when you bake left-over or over-proved dough and give it the name of a well-known, nay iconic, Italian bread.

I let the dough rise in the rims of loose-based sandwich tins. In the days when I was producing bread for sale I bought a dozen of these tins and used just the rims placed on large baking sheets to maximise oven space. It also produced standard sizes that fitted small pizza boxes.

The toppings are just what was at hand; a few cherry tomatoes and what could be rescued from a dying packet of basil; an open tin of green olives and the last of a jar of anchovies. Generous with the olive oil.

In the Pico 300C top and bottom, about 30 minutes, rims removed maybe half-way through.

We likes scraps …