Down at the farm where I keep my allotment they are always running workshops and on Friday I helped with the “Cob Oven Cooking” workshop. Great fun.
John came along at 8:30am to light the wood fire in the cob oven so that it would be ready to cook an hour and a half later.
Participants arrived at 9:30 and got straight into making the dough. We had decided to go with a no-yeast recipe, and using yoghurt, which I thought would be a little different.
Pizza Dough (with no yeast)
Yield: 2 pizzas
Ingredients:
- 1 cup self-raising flour
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup plain yoghurt (approximately)
Method:
- Measure dry ingredients into a bowl
- Add yoghurt and mix but don’t overdo it
- Gather dough together and press into a ball, then divide dough in half
- On lightly floured surface roll each half into a 13-inch (33cm) circle
- Place on pizza tins
- Cover base with passata (tomato paste)
- Add toppings of your choice and bake for 20-25 minutes until it looks done
For toppings we harvested herbs and green leafed vegetables from the farm’s community garden to add to the chopped ham, then topped it all off with a layer of grated cheese.
While the pizzas were cooking we made a tour of the farm’s community garden and the allotments, paying particular attention to the array of herbs that we grow there and at the same time working up an appetite. Here is the first pizza coming out of the oven.
I’ve been dying to say it, “this is one I prepared earlier!” Actually, it was prepared earlier, a lot earlier. I forgot to take a photo of the cooked pizza when it hit the table – but this is a photo I took at an earlier workshop. the variety of toppings is endless. All cooked in our cob oven.
Aug 20, 2012 @ 10:47:03
Let me have siome, yum yum
Aug 20, 2012 @ 12:20:26
It was yum Steve, with a hint of smoke!
Aug 21, 2012 @ 19:04:47
That’s it! We are using our old recycled bricks to make a base and we are going to have a cob oven before summer! Thanks for the nudge in the back Jean, I needed one :). It might be winter dragging on regardless here but its time to act as if Spring is in the air 🙂
Aug 22, 2012 @ 16:04:49
Good luck with your cob oven. It takes a bit of trial and error to get the fire just right – but it’s great fun.
Aug 22, 2012 @ 20:40:59
It will take a bit of trial and error for us to build it Jean, never mind about the lighting! It should be the stuff that posts are made of 😉