Using bread dough for pastry
A small loaf
Lately I've been following the trend to make no - knead bread dough and I've had very good results.
The bread comes up with nice air pockets in it and is always a gorgeous colour. There are plenty of videos on You Tube on bread making and I've put one on here so you can see how easy it is.
But I thought, well if the bread is so easy to make and there is no fat in it, why not use the same dough to make a pie? So I did. I made a batch of bread dough to the same recipe, used a half of it for a regular loaf and half of it for a pie.
The recipe for the dough has only four ingredients.
3 cups of any flour.
A quarter teaspoon of dried yeast.
A teaspoon of salt.
One and a third cups of tepid water. Don't have the water too hot or it will kill the yeast.
The water should be just warm to your touch.
The method
The method is simplicity itself.
Add the salt to the flour and mix it up.
Add the dry granules of yeast to that and mix it through.
Make a well in the middle of the mixture.
Pour in the water and stir with a fork.
When all the water has been absorbed, the dough will look like a sticky mess. Leave it alone, cover it with cling film and put it somewhere in the kitchen out of the draught. Now is the hard part, you have to leave it for eight to twelve hours. You will look at it occasionally to see what's happening, I know I do. You will notice that bubbles are forming on the surface as the yeast does its work. That's good. If there are no bubbles after four hours or so, then the yeast is not working and it will be pointless to continue. Most yeast that you buy in supermarkets nowadays is extremely high quality, so the likelihood of yours not working is negligible.
After the alloted time, flour the surface of your worktop and flour the inside of the baking tin that you'll use. Pour the dough out onto the worktop. Flour the top of the dough, cos its very sticky. Don't knead, just stretch it out into an oblong. Fold the sides in towards the middle, then fold the other two sides over those. Now lift the dough into your baking tin, cover it and put it back in the draught free place for three hours.
Heat your oven up to 250C Gas mark 8. Put the tin of newly risen dough into the oven somewhere near the top and leave it for twenty minutes. After this time, look at it and decide whether it needs more time to go crunchy and golden. All ovens are different, mine takes at least half an hour and then I have to take it out of the oven, shake it out of the tin and then turn it upside down for the dough to cook on the bottom. You'll soon get to know what's best for your bread.
But how did I use the bread dough for pastry? Here's how.
I took half of the same batch of dough but instead of folding it over on itself, I rolled it out with a rolling pin and lined a pie dish.
I'd made a pie mix of fried ham, fried onions, pre - cooked potatoes and a beaten egg. I filled the pie with this and added some chicken stock.
I rolled out the lid, sealed the pie and washed the lid with milk. Then I cooked it for half an hour at 200C Gas mark 6.
It was absolutely delicious.