» Helen’s Cooking. Easy cooking in 1-2-3! | Blog about healthy and easy to cook food http://helenscooking.info Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:25:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Puff pastry dough made easy! http://helenscooking.info/2011/09/29/puff-pastry-made-easy/ http://helenscooking.info/2011/09/29/puff-pastry-made-easy/#comments Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:41:18 +0000 helenscooking http://helenscooking.info/?p=1332

I love puff pastry, do you? You can create literally hundreds of recipes with it and it’s ready in 15 minutes: Apple strudel, croissants, puff pastry baskets and puff pastry fish pie and much more. The recipe of this dough will help you create a lot of awesomely delicious dishes in minutes.

For the dough you’ll need:

2 sticks of frozen butter (unsalted), no margarine.

 1 cup of water

3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

For the filling:

2-3 apples

½ cup of sugar

1 teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)

½ cup of finely chopped walnuts (optional)

The batter prep takes some time and effort, but then you’ll be able to freeze it and use for 2-3 weeks easy.

So, Take your butter, cut the sticks in halves and put in the freezer for 15 min.

Mix: water, flour and vanilla sugar.

Put the batter in a freezer for 10 min.

Take out of the freezer ½ stick of butter and the batter.

Put the clear wrap on the surface you are gonna work on, using the dough roller roll the dough out until 1 inch thick. Shred the butter on the rolled out dough and fold in triangle. Put in a freezer for 10-15 minutes (cover it with clear wrap when putting in the freezer). In 15 minutes take another ½ stick of butter, take out the dough, and put the clear wrap on the working surface (the same you used before or new one). Roll out the dough until 1 inch thick; shred the butter, fold in triangle, put for 15 min in the freezer (cover with clear wrap). Repeat the same procedure with the rest 2 halves of the butter sticks. This dough takes some time and effort, but it really is delicious and the best. But, if you don’t have no time for messing with this dough, just buy the ready puff pastry dough. I normally cook this dough over the weekend, because then I can relax roll out my dough go watch TV then repeat, you know… just enjoy this dough preparation procedure…:-))

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The dough is ready, when you shred the last 1/2 stick of butter and put it for 15 minutes in the fridge: take it out cut in 3-4 pieces. Use one piece to roll out your dough for the strudel , the other two you can use for the croissants:-) Keep the other parts of the dough in a freeser for as long as you ned. It’s a great dough to fix quick dessert or pie, or cakes, or roll…

But strudel is my favorite. Ususally it doesn’t live for more than 3 hours in my house, croissants may last for 24 h the most.

Enjoy and share with me your ways of using this recipe of dough.

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Pizza from scratch in 30 minutes! http://helenscooking.info/2011/08/30/pizza-scratch-30-minutes/ http://helenscooking.info/2011/08/30/pizza-scratch-30-minutes/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:14:07 +0000 helenscooking http://helenscooking.info/?p=1168

Normally when we cook pizza we think it should take an hour, I saw some recipes where cooking pizza took 4 hours. I bet it comes out as a delicous masterpiece, but… guess what… we normally don’t have 4 hours to fix the pizza. It’s good, when we have 30 minutes. That’s why I decided to share my recipe of fast pizza  with bacon, ham nad vegetables. The stuffing can be pretty much any… the dough here, that’s what important to know how to cook.

For the dough you will need:

2.5 cups of flour,

2 tablespoons of olive oil (vegetable will also be good),

0.25 oz dry yeast,

1 teaspoon of baking powder ,

1 cup of hot water,

1 teaspoon of salt and

1 teaspoon of sugar.

Mix flour, yeast, baking powder,salt & sugar.Add warm water and vegetable oil(olive oil). make a dough.

Put it in a stove for 5-10 min (put the bowl with hot water under the dough).

Cut everything you want for you stuffing :

I did ham, bacon, onion,red bell pepper,corn,tomato, 2 cheeses.

 Roll out the dough. Should be 1/4 inch thin. Add: tomato sauce+oregano+salt+black pepper->cheese (1 type) -. then all the ingredients. preheat the oven at 375F. Bake the pizza for 15 min.

Take it out add the second cheese -> bake for additional 5-7 min. DONE!

 This amount of dough should make you 3 pizzas. (or 1 pizza and a bread loaf).

Remember: you can’t store the dough in fridge so you have to use it in 1-2 days…

Enjoy!

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