Communion Bread

I am a pastor and one of my joys is making the communion bread each month. I have several that I like to make this is the most popular. My favorite is the Matzot but the congregation thinks that is too loud!

I weigh my ingredients. This is one cup of all purpose flour. To this I will add baking powder and sugar before whisking together. Recipe below.

Next is the butter. Some of you may be saying, "Are you making a pie crust?"

"Well yes, I am actually."

I even use this as my pie dough. By the way that is salted butter. Make sure that you pay attention to that, if like most bakers you use unsalted butter. You will need to add about 1/8 tsp of salt to the recipe in the dry ingredients.

Here I have a very loose dough ball. You can do this in your food processor, but I find I always add too much water, so I use my fingers and palms to rub the butter into the flour and cool it down again with a few minuted in the refrigerator. It is a pie-type dough so keeping it cool will generate a better texture.

Once it is cool, I use a heavy Pampered Chef scrapper to mix it all together.

I don't start rolling it out at once. First you have to "squish" it together, Then I use my rolling pin to push it out into the form I want. In the picture above you can see the parallel lines of my pin. After the picture above I rotated the Silpat 90 degrees and did it again. Do this several times before resorting to the roller. If your roller sticks, chill the dough. If you are in a hurry, lightly flour the dough. Or you can use a piece of wax paper, but if the dough is too warm it will still stick to the wax paper.

Pressing the dough like this helps the dough spread out evenly without those unpleasant splits that require patching the dough.

Here he dough is rolled out evenly to a thickness of about 1/8 of an inch. You can use your hand to feel the consistency of the thickness. If you want to have some fun, experiment by making several batches and rolling the dough to different thicknesses.

I cut the dough using a pasta wheel.

Notice that I rolled the dough directly on the Silpat so there is no need to transfer the dough. Just slide it on to the pan like below.

I have been experimenting with where to bake this recipe. This time I tried the bottom rack position. Make notes to yourself on these experiments. I know that you really believe that you will remember the details but you won't. Write them down.

Here is the final product. The picture doesn't show it well but the bottoms are perfect while the tops are a little insipid. I will serve them bottom side up and next time I will bake them a little higher in the Oven.

Adam's Communion Bread #3

5 ounces of flour

1 1/2 tsp of sugar

1/8 tsp of salt

1 1/2 tsp of sugar

1 TSP oil

4 TSP of salted butter

1/3 scant cup of water (probably less)

1. Whisk together dry ingredients

2. Blend oil, butter, and flour mixture until there are NO butter lumps left. It will look like a clumpy corn meal

4. Dribble water into the dough until it just comes together.

5. Roll out to desired thickness and bake at 425 degrees until golden - about 8 minutes.

Cook for fun. Eat for life.

Everybody Wants Perfect Pan Pizza

So you want perfect pan pizza, but you end up with insipid crust and over-baked tops. As usual, the problem is not always the recipe. I tried variations on pizza crust ad nauseum with little change in the final result. I added oil, didn't add oil. I added sugar, didn't add sugar. I tried everybody's variation on the crust.

Happiness came when I changed the method. Recipes are the individual variations that please the eater. The method is how the cook execute the recipe. Once the method is learned success naturally follows.

As with most home cooking, the problem lies in the heat. If you have ever looked at restaurant pizza ovens they have thick stone bottoms whose sole purpose is to store heat. The basic problem with pizza is that you have a bread dough smeared with moist ingredients. The bread want to cook into a lovely, yeasty yumminess while all of the pizza sauce and moisture from the cheese slows that down. Water can simply absorb massive amounts of heat. Sometimes faster than we can add it. We have to change our dynamic.

Here is one of my larger iron skillets. It is about 14 inches across and weighs over 8 pounds. This is my pizza pan. It put it into a 450 degree oven about 45 minutes before I want to bake the pizza. All of that iron will cook my crust completely while the topping gently browns.

 Here is my oven set up. I have moved one rack to the lowest position and the other to the highest position to get it out of the way. Rack positioning is critical for most baking. By heating the pan and baking the pizza on the lowest rack, I am maximizing the amount of heat that hits the bottom of the pan and minimizing the amount of heat on the top.

I put a thin crust (with limited toppings) high in the oven.

 Here is the pizza dough "rolled out." You will notice all of the dimpling. Those dimples come from my finger tips. No actual rolling pin was used. This is a fairly "wet" dough that is very pliant.

Sometimes I will stretch the dough out to just the same size as the bottom of the pan and carry the toppings right out to edge. This will give a nice carmelization out on the perimeter that some of my eaters like. Other times I will over size the dough so that when placed in the pan the dough goes up the sides a bit. This gives the dough more holding power to keep more toppings in place.

Just before putting the dough in the pan, I add a little (2 TSP) cold oil and swirl it around. This keeps the dough from sticking and fries the bottom just a bit.

 The dough is now in the pan and it is already cooking before I can even get the toppings added. Bubbles will start to form and the edges will sizzle.

One of the things that I enjoy at this point is placing my fingers on the dough. I can feel the yeast kicking in to overdrive before it dies from the heat.

The Pizza Cooking on the Bottom Rack

Here the pizza is done. The crust color doesn't come out very well in this picture, but it is the same color as the crust below.

The finished bottom. This is a lovely pizza with a great crust and gooey, yummy topping.

Adam's Pan Pizza Crust

Makes 1 12 inch pan pizza

8 ounces of bread flour

1 1/2 cups of water

1/2 tsp of yeast

5/8 tsp of salt

1. Whisk together dry ingredients.

2. Add water and knead until silky and smooth. About 5 minutes with my Kitchenaid Mixer on #2.

3. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside.

4. Allow to double in size.

This dough gets a better texture if refrigerated before hand and placed cool into the hot iron.

Cook for enjoyment. Eat for life.