Making the dough
If you want to mix by hand then off you go, but I’m going to explain how it’s done in a bread machine. There are plenty of sites out there with advice on mixing / kneeding / proving / knocking back and hats off to anyone doing that. Here though, we’ll be pouring things into the bread machine and hitting a button. Bliss. By the way, don’t think that for one moment I’m taking a shortcut and thereby making do with what comes out of a machine. I have used both methods and I don’t find any marked difference between the 2 apart from it being easier in the machine. By the same token, I use a petrol-powered lawn mower to cut the grass, not a pair of shears. Kids will love making it by hand – let’s hope you love the cleaning up afterwards 🙂
Putting the ingredients into the bread machine
You’re probably reading that and wondering, in a Jeremy Clarkson-esque manner, “how hard can it be?”. Well, not hard but I’ve got a method and I’m taking the time to write it – please take the time to follow. I first put in the bread machine paddle… it’s easy to forget this when you’re not used to it, you chuck in all the ingredients and you wonder why it’s not mixing. Assuming you’ve not made that school-boy error (yes I have if you’re wondering!), get the bread machine’s removable basin onto the scales and set them to zero once it’s on. In with the wet ingredients first – 300g water (200g cold plus 100g from a recently boiled kettle to get the right temp) and then the 2tsps (teaspoons) olive oil. Now the pinch of sugar before resetting the scales to zero and adding the 10g of salt – you could of course just add 10g onto where you were but resetting is good and makes sure your scales don’t go into their auto-off status because you’ve been faffing about reading these instructions… quick… get on with it! 🙂 Reset them again as you are now adding the 500g of flour. If you have a sifter, great but it’s not essential and you shouldn’t take too long, get it in there and spread the yeast evenly over the flour and get it straight into the bread machine.
Bread machine settings
Check your manual, you’ll probably find it has a dough setting (even though it might not mention pizza…which is ok), this will not be baking the bread, this is purely a mix and often takes about 90 minutes. The machines have a set pattern, they mix, stop a bit, mix again, leave it a while and mix again before holding off the mix and letting the mixture rise. Let it do its thing.
Once it’s finished mixing, you can actually start straight away or if you’re pre-prepping or making a second batch then you need to store it and here’s how. Get a big bowl and wipe a tiny bit of olive oil all over the inner surface – all of it as the bread will rise and expand. Tip the dough out into the bowl – it might need a little encouragement coming out of the bread machine’s basin – don’t forget to remove the paddle if it’s stuck in the dough… this is normal. Then cover the top of the bowl with either a damp clean tea-towel or preferably some cling film smeared on the inside with a bit more olive oil – use sparingly, you’re not after it dripping with oil, just something to stop the dough sticking to it if it rises above the bowl. It’s going to double in size, and perhaps then some! You’re not after a perfect air-tight seal here, if some oil stops the film sticking, just wrap it, it’ll be fine. Don’t take that as a license to leave it uncovered, I’m just saying you’re not creating a drum skin.