Flat Bread---Piadine

A simple Italian flat bread, ideal for the barbecue season, quick to make and a great alternative to soft bread buns. The basic recipe below can be adapted to include herbs, garlic, chilli, shallots or bacon etc to add interesting flavours or extra texture to the breads.

350g Plain flour
10g Salt
30ml olive oil
100-110ml Luke warm water.



Simply place the flour, oil and salt into a bowl.

Add most of the water and mix everything together by hand to form a soft ball of dough. If the dough seems dry then add a little more water to it to make the soft ball. Adding too much water will give a dough that is too sticky to roll.

Turn the dough out onto the work top and knead for about 5 minutes to give a smooth, well mixed dough.

Lightly oil a bowl, place the dough into it, cover with cling film and set aside to rest for about 20 minutes.

When the dough has tested, heat a griddle or heavy bottomed frying pan/ skillet ready for use.

Divide the dough into about 12 equal pieces, lightly flour the work top.

Take each piece of dough and using your hands, knead it gently,up into a ball. Roll out thinly to approx 12-15cm.

Lightly oil the griddle/pan and place the rolled dough disk onto it. leave for about 2 minutes to brown, turn over and cook on until both sides have browned.

The Piadine is now ready to enjoy and is at its best warm and freshly made. They can be kept warm for a short time, or frozen for later use but do then lose a little of their character.

Enjoy.

Croutons

Its lad again, I got in from school and decided to make dinner. I made a simple stuffed jacket potato meal with a salad. So to make the salad have a better flavour and texture I just made a few croutons. These are very basic to make but some people find them a bit dull so i decided to add interest to them as detailed below.

All you need is;

• A couple of slices of bakery style bread
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Couple pinches mixed herbs
• olive oil

Then to make them you simply;

1. Cut the bread into equal bite size pieces.
2. Heat oil in a large frying pan.
3. When oil is slightly hot add the garlic, it can be crushed or sliced, and it should start to sizzle.
4. Add the bread and it might stop sizzling so turn it up a bit so it sizzles again, add herbs.
5. Wait for them to crisp and brown and serve on top of the salad with a nice italian dressing.