Pizza Day


Today we finaly started the Cooking! We arrived yesterday at a beautiful villa, total 12 of us - 2 Australian couples, 2 couples from US and 3 singles ladies (Canada, Australia and me). Quite an interesting mixture of the crowd with the same cooking pation! 2 of them have even come for the second time...after nearly 10 years. We made friends immediately and it feels like Home - house has such a good karma... 


The main course of today was the Pizza - here, in Tuscany, on Sunday they usualy make pizza...so did we. 

Key ingredients are Pizza dough and Fresh tomatoe souce:

Pizza Dough recipie

Ingredients:
60ml olive oil
25g bread yeast (fresh) or 12g dried
500ml warm water
1kg all purpose flour
10g fine salt

Procedure:
1. Crumble the yeast in a bowl. Add the salt and mix until you get a liquid consistency.
2. Add the oil, water and flour and mux together.
3. Knead well untill you have a smooth dough.
4. Form the dough into a large ball and place it in a bowl and cover it with a dampened towel and let it stand for 5min.
5. Cut into pieces of about 230g each and form into small balls.
6. Let the balls stand covered for at least 2 hours or until you need them.
7. If desired keep the dough in the refrigerator for a day covered with a damp cloth.
8. Remove from refrigerator an hour before use.

P.s for Focaccia use the same ingredients plus 2 medium large boiled, peeled and mashed potatoes.

Preparing a pizza

1. Roll out about 2mm thick fir a crispy or 5mm for a softer pizza.
2. Garnish with fresh tomatoe souce (mash peeled-canned (!!!) tomatoes with potatoe masher, add olive oil, salt&peper, basil, wild majoram).
3. Add chopped mozzarella and any other ingredients you like.
4. Bake in oven for 15min at 250C.


I can't believe it was so simple and sooooo delitious! 


...you think this is the only thing we learned today?  - you would be impressed to know that we prepared 12 dishes today! Thanks god we did not need to eat them all... most of them were the basics for the Meals to come. Our class included:
- Pumpkin and Parmesan cheese cups (absolutely amazing hot starter)
- Minestrone
- Focaccia
- Mediterranean fresh tomatoe sauce
- Green parsley sauce
- Cheese and Truffle fondue souce
- Aubergine souce
- Zabione cream with Cat's tongue (ah... that melted in the mouth even after 3 course dinner..)
- Panna Cotta
- Almond cookies - Cantuccini
- Pizza..


Time went fast... again the 3 course Dinner..... and a traditional dessert table with 36 bottles of alcohol drinks on it... and endless chitty chatting till mudnight..


Buonanotte!

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