createSuper Fast Prosciutto & Basil Flatbread
Too many dishes, and a truncated schedule equals a crazy off the wall experiement that turned out brilliantly.
I’m 100% sure I’m not the only person to ever make it, this is just a super fast / easy one that everyone I’ve fed it too absolutely loves and can’t believe how little effort is involved ;-)
Ready
1 bag ready made pizza crust dough
- Yes, you read that right, ready made pizza crust dough
- No, I’m not insane
- Yes you can do fresh from scratch dough as well
- Fresh made dough works just as well if not better, but this is about a super fast way to do things.
- Sobys in Canada has the ready made dough
- About 750g of dough in what ever form if you don’t have a Soby’s handy
1 Bunch of basil
- Good handfull of leaves when cleaned up (not the small packs that are more common in Canadian stores now)
- You want slightly less basil then prosciutto, but not by much
Around 12 slices prosciutto
- Around 2mm thick (not shaved)
- This equates to “a handful”; Basically you want enough bits in the bread when it’s baked. Don’t forget bread rises, so it’s going to look like a lot before it’s baked (I made this mistake once).
- You get what you pay for here, better quality prosciutto gives a better taste to the bread; I use an Italian prosciutto from the local butcher shop
Olive Oil
Flour
Set
- Cutting board
- Baking sheet
Go
- Hack up the prosciutto, you want smallish bits, nothing larger then half a postage stamp, but don’t go for uniformity. The goal is to have bits through the bread, but they don’t have to be uniform, and they can clump up.
- Same thing for the basil, make sure once you’ve chopped it up that you bruise it gently to allow the flavor out into the bread.
- Once you’ve got the bits chopped, you need to fold them into the dough. Do this in batches until all the basil & prosciutto are in the dough.
- You want things evenly through out the dough as much as possible, but don’t worry about pockets here and there
- Place the dough on the cutting sheet, cover and let it rise for a half hour or so (guage this based on the dough you use)
- After the proving step, bash the air out of the dough and flatten it out onto the baking sheet
- Lightly sprinkle the top with olive oil
- Bake for around 20-25 minutes 350°F or until lightly brown on top
- Remove, cool on a rack until slightly warm
- Cut it up as pleases you
- Serve
What you should know
This is totally brilliant as a starter that always goes over well.
Time it so you can get the bread into the oven once your guests are there, drinks, some small talk, and then the bread that everyone can smell comes out still warm as a perfect starter.
Enjoy!
How about garlic? I’m thinking a clove of fresh garlic would be a nice addition.
I tried that once (fresh cloves of garlic added to the bread as well); I find that I prefer just the prosciutto and basil (personal choice of course).
I do like a rosemary & garlic combo tho.
I’m also trying to find one that works with fresh ginger to add a bit of zip. Yes, ginger in bread, I know, a little odd ;-)
So in the cafe you talked about adding ginger and chilli. So… how did it go?
Right.
So I did up a small test batch last night with the ginger and chilli as per the cafe conversations
It wasn’t bad, but I’m not completely satisfied with the results …
It was just ginger, and chilli in the bread, it didn’t come together and make something more then just the sum of the ingredients …
I’ve got another couple of ideas that I’m going to try, updates to follow ;-)
Brett, picking up on your chilli and citrus comment in the cafe, what about adding a load of lemon zest? Perhaps first zesting the lemons into a Simple Syrup and reducing in a pan until the zest is just coated. No idea if it would work, but it must be worth a go… in fact I think I’ll try it.
So I ran two parallel experiments.
I made up a batch of pizza dough and left it to prove for 1 ½ hours. Meanwhile I finely chopped a red chilli and some ginger, and I zested a lemon (my trusty Microplane proving invaluable again).
I then split these prepared ingredients into two piles. The first I transferred to a bowl and added a little olive oil and some sea salt. I mixed it up and battered it about a bit with the spoon to get those oils released.
The second pile I dropped into some simple syrup and heated gently. I reduced this down to a thick syrup and left it to cool… mistake. It crystallized and turned into spicy candy. I later added water and dissolved it again then strained it through paper towel. What I should have done was leave it to sit in the warm thin syrup then strain it just before use.
I battered the air out the dough and split it in two. I kneaded one batch of the flavouring into each. A little more flour was required as the liquids moistened the dough too much. I then left the dough to prove for half an hour and then cooked the breads in my super-hi-tech oven on pizza mode.
The verdict: both breads were good, but both would have benefited from more salt. The unsweetened was preferred 2 votes to 1. Dipping in salted olive oil was the best accompaniment we tried, but we thought tzatziki would work really well.
Give them a try — be generous with the salt and olive oil.
Okay, so the next test batch was black olives, fresh ginger, and lime olive oil after baking.
Turned out much better then the first batch, but still not quite where I’d post it as a recipe yet …
This round, the bread was a better all around mix (versus me just loving the individual ingredients). I think it needs a touch of an herb just to tie it off …
That’s the next batch ;-)
I 100% agree. I’ve made this as a starter for dinner parties. I often use leftover pizza dough from the freezer which adds a nice twist for a marginal amount of additional effort if not I filch some ready made dough from my local pizza joint.