Pizza dough bread

The other day, I wrote a post about Jamie Oliver's pizza dough recipe which I have taken a liking to. The great thing about it is that it also makes a really nice bread. So the last time I made pizza dough, I doubled the amount I usually make, and had enough for one pizza crust and one loaf of bread. Which actually turned out to be a rather large loaf of bread as I might have left it to rise for longer than planned due to getting lost in my little world of crafting. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, pizza dough and bread without any extra effort. The bread will proof nicely while you are baking your pizza, and once the pizza is ready the bread is ready to go into the oven. Easy and convenient and gives enough bread to feed two people for a week!

Pizza dough and bread (directly borrowed from Jamie Oliver):
Makes enough for one large oven tray of pizza and one loaf of bread
800 g tipo '00' flour or strong white bread flour
200 g fine semolina flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
2 x 7g instant yeast sachet (about 2x2 tsp)
1 tbsp caster sugar
650 ml lukewarm water
4 tbsp olive oil

The howto:
Measure all dry ingredients in a big bowl. Add the water in small amounts while mixing with a wooden spoon. When dough is well mixed, add the olive oil. Transfer the dough onto the table and knead until smooth. Transfer back into a bowl, cover and let rest in a warm place for about an hour or until doubled in size. 

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. After rising, knead the dough lightly. Separate half of the dough to make your pizza crust and form the other one into a loaf (or make two loaves). Slice the top of the bread a few times, and sprinkle lightly with flour. Let rise for about 40 minutes. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until knocking at the bottom of the bread with your knuckles produces a hollow sound. Let cool completely before slicing (at least in theory, in practice everyone knows it's impossible to resist warm bread straight out of the oven).

The verdict:
This recipe is a really quick and easy bread recipe. If you are making a pizza dough you might as well get twice the benefit from your efforts and make a loaf of bread at the same time and almost no extra effort. And we all know that home baked bread is more healthy than store bought, less salt and no weird additives. And nothing beats eating a few slices warm with the butter melting on the bread. The bread is light and fluffy and perfect for lunch sandwiches.

Card of the day:
This time, I got the inspiration for my card from the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge. The theme this week is emboss it, and I have a number of embossing folders I haven't gotten around to using so I thought this would be a good opportunity. As the theme for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is "Anything goes", I'm also entering that challenge.

I used a Sizzix embossing folder on Tim Holtz Tea Dye cardstock for the background. After embossing, I sanded the cardstock, inked the edges and distressed using the blades of my scissors. I used Tim Holtz Distress Paint in Antiqued Bronze on the embossing folder to stamp the background behind the sentiment, stamped the sentiment from the Tim Holtz Grunge Cirque stamp set in Tim Holtz Aged Mahogany distress ink and heat embossed using Papermania Copper embossing powder. The star is also from the Tim Holtz Grunge Cirque stamp set, and was stamped in Aged Mahogany Distress ink on scraps left over from the background for the sentiment, so the stars have some veins of the Copper Distress Paint running through them. I attached everything onto Tim Holtz Aged Mahogany cardstock.