Kale pizza and how not to make one…. DH #20
It was of course high time that I continued on my mission to cook all the recipes from one of the Donna magazines… My so called Donna Hay Challenge… So… The last one I made was all the way back in september (delicious quinoa salad with feta and onions) and if I am continuing in this pace it will be 2018 before I am finally done with all the recipes. It’s gonna be longer than a year soon but it doesn’t need to be an endless affair. So time to dive back into the kitchen with Donna’s magazine under my arm. Thankfully most of the recipes in the magazine are healthy and so fit in nicely with our new way of living. (see how I am consciously not calling it a diet?)
One of the dishes was a whole wheat pizza with kale and mushrooms. Maybe not directly my choice of topping for a pizza but it did sound intriguing so I was gonna give it a go. Before I ran into the supermarket I checked my cupboards to see if I had any whole wheat flour and yes, it was there. So I got the rest of the stuff and went to work. Dough was made in no time and so couldn’t go wrong… Or so I thought. The dough was supposed to rise for about half an hour and than double in size but when checking after 30 minutes it still looked exactly the same. You know that moment when you suddenly realize you haven’t checked how old that flour actually was… I grabbed the bag from the cupboard and checked the date… December 2012… Oops… Now I am usually not the type to throw away flour that is just a bit over the date but well two years is maybe pushing it a bit. It’s essentially dead. Doesn’t do thing anymore…
So here I was with my ‘non rising’ dough and a kale pizza that was never gonna work. But I got this far and call me stubborn but I did want to see what would happen if I popped it in the oven anyway. Miracles happen right? 😉 So I prepared the pizza as per the rest of the instructions. Rolled it out, covered it with stuff and popped it in the oven. Well I guess I don’t need to really explain to you what went wrong if you look at the photos right? Completely dry crust, no taste whatsoever. Of course for our dinner I made the dough again and we did get a good crust eventually. And the pizza itself? it’s slightly odd having kale on a pizza but I liked it. The flour? it ended it’s life at the bottom of the bin…
kale pizza with mushrooms and ricotta
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 300 gram small mushrooms in slices
- 150 gr kale
- 1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
- 1 tbsp lemon zest
- 180 gr ricotta
- grated pecorino
- For the dough:
- 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 tsp sugar
- 125 ml lukewarm water
- 185 gam wholewheat flour
- 1 tsp seasalt flakes
- 1/2 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- To make the dough, add the yeast, sugar and lukewarm water into a bowl. Stir through and leave to stand for about five minutes until the dough forms bubbles.
- Add the flour and the salt into a mixing bowl and make a dent in the middle. Pour the yeast mixture in and ad the oil to it and mix everything well until you have a dough. Knead for about 4-5 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Put the dough into a lightly greased bowl and cover with a clean, slightly moise towel. Place into a warm spot and leave to rise for about 30 minutes or until doubled in volume.
- Preheat the oven to 200 C and place a large bakingtray or pizzastone into the oven. Roll out the dough to a rectangular size of about 20 x 40 cm and put on a piece of baking paper.
- Heat the oil in a large frying pan on high heat. Add the mushrooms and quickly bake them with salt and pepper. Do this for about 6 minutes, Remove from the heat and add the kale (chopped small of course), chili flakes and lemon zest and shake to combine.
- Spread the ricotta over the bottom of the pizza dough. Add the mushroom mixture on top. Remove the hot plate or stone from the oven and put the pizza on top. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until the dough is cooked and golden. Sprinkle with the pecorino before serving.
- Om het deeg te maken, doe je de gist, suiker en het lauwwarme water in een kommetje. Roer het door en laat ongeveer 5 minuten staan tot het bubbels gaat vormen.
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
As much as you cook I can’t believe you had old flour. I would be covered in weevil bugs if I had flour that long. I keep my flour in the freezer until my small stash in the pantry is gone.
I like the final product.
Well I’ll tell you how that happened… You see I am one of those people who always think I need to buy flour. So I come home with a new bag of flour and use that, only to find out I had some leftover in the cupboard. This one kind of escaped my attention for a pretty long time! It was still closed so no bugs, thank goodness.. We actually don’t have bugs but the temperatures here are quite different from yours.. 😉 How is John doing?
He’s back to work but he’s eating sensibly but hasn’t exercised and still worked a long day yesterday. He gets scolded today.
Are you kidding me? He’s back to work already? Wow… Doesn’t sound like good plan though.. I think some scolding is definitely in order!
simone
I wonder if it wasn’t the yeast that didn’t work. I love kale pizza and I would probably eat it anyway. Kale is so big around here in Nashville .
O that could be the issue too. Quite frankly I thought it was very little yeast for the flour amount. The yeast was fresh though and bubbled sufficiently so I’m thinking that wasn’t the issue. I am still not convinced kale pizza is for me… 😉
I’m so sorry to hear about your crust. Anyway, I’m sure this pizza must taste wonderful. I love kale and mushrooms.
Wow, in my house, flour never has time to get that old!!! 😉
Cheers,
Rosa
No in my house neither Rosa, but it was one of those cases where I kept buying new bags of flour and used that instead of the ones I had in the cupboard. It just got forgotten. Wrong stock management!
I’m a real squirrel, so that happens to me too! 😉
Haha, so been there! The first loaf of bread I ever made, I decided that I didn’t need to add any salt (I grew up not cooking or eating salt particularly, how that’s changed!) and that loaf was utterly grim.
The second loaf I made was with oooooold flour, and that was just as bad. Luckily I persevered and third time lucky n all that 🙂
Janie x
O yes, I have baked my share of ‘I forgot the salt’ things… Yuck… Weird how a tiny bit of salt can make all the difference in the world!
Bummer about the crust. We go through a lot of flour, so little danger of that happening around here. I think. 😉 Never had kale on pizza — sounds kind of interesting.
Well the stupid thing is that I use a lot of flour myself too. I guess this one just got pushed a bit to the back of the cupboard and I kept using the newer ones instead…
I had never thought of kale on a pizza, great idea 🙂 Sorry about your flour, my father in law kept complaining his bread wasn’t rising and when I check the date on his yeast.. :-0