Pizza

Pizza must be one of the most popular dishes on the planet and while it is difficult to make it to the standards of the best pizzas ashore, even in a simple galley, you can certainly make something very acceptable and considerably more appetising than some pizzas I have bought. I've found that I get excellent results fromcooking them in my frying pan, which is also a lot more economical on fuel than cooking a pizza in the oven; however, this does limit its size. You also need a first-class quality pan for pizza, because they have to get very hot. I recommend that you used one made of cast metal, ideally with vertical sides, ie a skillet. Cast-iron pans are relatively inexpensive, if you shop around, and often available second hand. Personally, I prefer cast alloy, but they are a considerable investment. If you don’t have an oven, your frying pan will constantly be used as a substitute, so one of good quality is an investment that is well worth while for oven-free cooks.

If you do have an oven, theres no need for any special equipment, although a rolling pin is nice to have. Nor do you to roll out the dough into a perfect circle; indeed, if you simply roll it out to fit your baking sheet, you will be able to make a larger pizza and make best use of your oven.  I can see nothing unattractive in the ‘rustic’ appearance of a near rectangle. Even when I had an oven, I found I got the best results from partly pre-cooking the dough. I'm pleased to be able to report than an Italian sailor I met, told me that his mother always made them like this, so I reckon that I am not alone in finding that it’s simply not possible to have a standard oven retain its heat sufficiently for the sort base that you get at the local pizzeria. If you're fantastical about pizza, I suppose you could a pizza stone to put in your oven, but it would be a nuisance to store safely and I suspect it would be more trouble than it's worth on a boat.  Whether using the oven or a frying pan, I suggest that you pre-cook it and flip it over before adding the topping. That way it both rises and cooks properly.

The following recipe makes a base for a 230 mm (9 in) frying pan. I have to admit that when I make it for myself, I usually manage to get through two-thirds of it, but I’m not a delicate feeder. I prefer not to have too thick a base, but if you are feeding two hearty appetites, you can make more dough for a thicker and more substantial base, make two smaller pizza (cooking the second while eating the first) or invest in a larger frying pan! Just keep the proportions of the dough ingredients the same.

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 tsp olive oil

1/4 cup lukewarm water

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp instant dried yeast

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

• If you’re using an oven, pre-heat it to a moderate heat.
• Put the oil and water into a small mixing bowl and mix them together. You can use seawater, if you prefer, and leave out the salt.
• Add the salt and the yeast and then blend in the flour with a spatula or something similar.
• When the ingredients have combined into a dough, knead this gently for a couple of minutes. You will probably need a little more flour for this.
• Roll the dough out so that it fits your frying pan or baking sheet. Leave it to rise for at least a quarter of an hour, longer is you're very organised. If you are in a cold place, warm the frying pan or put something like a night light in the oven to keep the dough warm.
• Cook over a medium flame on a flame tamer for about 10 minutes, or cook in a moderate oven for the same time. Turn the base over and add the topping.

All sorts of goodies can be used to top pizza, of course, and you probably have your favourites.  If your lockers contain tomatoes, olives and capers, you’re almost there. I can also recommend vegan chorizo salami, but would warn against overloading your pizza with too many different flavours. After all, a pizza Margherita is immensely popular in Italy and as simple as it comes.  The following recipe is a voyaging one, for when you aren't overloaded with fresh vegetables. 

PIZZA TOPPING

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion. diced

1 garlic clove, diced

2 tomatoes, finely chopped

1 tbsp Annie's Mixed Herbs

6 black olives, sliced

optional tomato purée

grated cheese – as you like

• Heat the oil in a pan. Add the onion and garlic and fry until softened.
• Lower the heat and add the tomatoes and mixed herbs. Cook until most of the moisture had evaporated leaving a thick sauce. This depends a lot on your tomatoes - you may need to add some tomato purée to thicken it up. On the other hand, add a little wine or water if the mix looks very dry.
• Throw in the olives.
• Take the half-cooked pizza base, turn it over and spread the sauce over the base, right to the edges, spreading it carefully and as evenly as possible.
• Grate over as much cheese as you want.
• Turn down the heat and put the pizza back to cook (covered, if you’re using a frying pan), until the cheese has melted.

Notes:

• If you don’t have fresh tomatoes, you can use a couple from a can. Put the rest of the tomatoes into a glass jar and use them the next day (or put them in the fridge). Or you can use some passata, if you have some. If all else fails, just use tomato purée suitably diluted with water.
  
• For vegans, leave off cheese and sprinkle with generous amounts of "Parmegan".  Alternatively, this is one place where vegan 'cheese' is acceptable.  I've heard that there is some excellent vegan cheese around, but have yet to find any in New Zealand.
  

Variations:

• Top with microgreens or rocket (arugula), if you're lucky enough to have some. 
• Pepperdews, mushrooms, or sliced green or red peppers, all go well with the above.
• A great alternative topping is sun-dried tomato pesto.  
• If you don’t have black olives, try green olives instead. The stuffed ones are particularly good.
• Add a tsp capers with the olives.
• If you've got fresh tomatoes with a really good flavour, you can simply slice them quite thickly and lay them out on the pizza dough.  Cook a few mushrooms and a little red pepper and put those on top with some olives and capers, and cheese if you have it.
  
• If you are getting short of inspiration, row ashore and wander along to the nearest pizza parlour. You’ll soon get a whole slew of new ideas!

Pizza made with dairy cheese and topped with microgreens

The (Very) Acceptable Ovenless Loaf

 

I came to realise that my vision of perfection (The Perfect Ovenless Loaf) might be difficult for others, as well as myself, to achieve.  Indeed, unless you want square slices of bread (and there are many good reasons for this preference), assembling the necessary hardware might seem more trouble than it's worth.  I've written this post to offer a couple of different options for those of us who want to make bread regularly and don't have an oven, one using a frying pan and one using a saucepan.  Oddly, they produce very different results.

First of all, let's make the dough.  You can use just about any dough recipe for either method.

For a 230 mm/9 in frying pan or a 2 l/1 qt saucepan

2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

Method:

• Make the dough, following the instructions for Basic bread.  I  recommend using the vital wheat gluten, if you have it, because the cooking process isn't ideal. 
• The dough needs to be a firm one: if it's to soft, the loaf will simply spread itself all over the bottom of the frying pan and that isn't what we are trying to achieve.
  
• Take it out of the bowl and form a roughly circular loaf, which covers a half to two-thirds of the pan base.
  

Frying pan bread

I use a heavy, non-stick alloy pan for this (not Teflon coated!)  But you can also use any really well-seasoned frying pan that you're sure your bread won't stick to.  If your bowl doesn't sit securely on the frying pan, it would be worth getting a lid that fits, preferably one that doubles the useable height of the pan. You also want a fairly deep frying pan, which are anyway more generally useful than a shallow one.

• Put the dough in the frying pan and cover it with your lid or bowl.  Let the bread rise.
• When it’s ready to cook, put the frying pan over a high heat on a flame tamer, and cook for 15 minutes. If you smell burning, reduce the heat, if you can’t smell baking bread, increase it. The flame tamer ensures that the heat radiates across the base of the pan and this avoids spot burning.  Again, use your bowl as a lid.  If the bowl seems precarious and you don't have a domed lid, put on our usual lid and accept that the bread will be flatter than you might have chosen.  This is, after all, an acceptable ovenless loaf.
  
• After 15 minutes, turn the flame down to moderate and cook for a further 20 to 30 minutes.  After 20 minutes, take off the lid and check the loaf.  If the top is still very soft, cook it longer, checking every 5 minutes.  You won't get a hard crust on it.  Once you've cooked it this way a few times, you'll get a feel for how long it takes.
  
• Once the bread feels pretty firm, ie almost cooked, you are now going to spoil this rather nice wee loaf by turning it upside down to brown what was the top.  Even though it's almost cooked, the weight of it will flatten the loaf.  There's not much we can do about that.
• Pop the lid back on, give it about 5 minutes and then turn off the heat.  Rremove the lid and just leave the loaf in place until the frying pan is just warm.  Take the loaf out and cool it on a rack (I use my toaster).

If everything has gone according to plan, you will end up with a loaf of smaller diameter but greater height than the frying pan.  In fact I often see 'artisan' rye breads that don't look very different from how this one ends up.   Regardless, it will be delicious bread, incredibly good value and better than anything a small income voyager can buy unless they're some place where wholemeal bread is subsidised (as it used to be in the Azores, many moons ago).  The major drawback of frying pan bread is that the narrow slices are not ideal for sandwiches. 

 

Note:

• You can make really first-class rolls in the frying pan.  Use the bread recipe above and form it into rolls.  Put them in the pan so that they aren't touching and let them rise.  Then cook as above.  They will spread in to one another, but are easily separated.

Saucepan bread

 

This produces a Very Acceptable Ovenless loaf, and is now my preferred method of making a loaf.  It comes out with a really good crust all round and is of a suitable size for sandwiches.  For this method, you need a high-quality, straight-sided, heavy-based pan that has no hot spots.  Be careful if it has a laminated base - it might not take kindly to being used as an oven.  Although you can use the saucepan lid, the ideal is to use is a non-stick, cast alloy, 150 mm/6 in frying pan.  I generally use this for roasting Indian spices, but have found it very useful for many other purposes.  It doesn't take up much room.  (Mine is made by Avanti - it's a great little pan, but is totally let down by the so-called enamel, which I suspect is powder-coating and stained, irrevocably, the first time I used it.  I wish I'd bought the black version.)  If you use the pan's lid, oil that, too.  The saucepan I think is a nominal one litre/quart pan, but I've given the actual dimensions for the avoidance of doubt.

 

For a 150 mm/6 in saucepan, 70 mm/3 in deep

1 1/2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey

 2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

 

Method:

• Grease or oil your pan.  I was given some hemp oil and use that.  It's expensive to buy, but is very thick and is the best I've found for this purpose.  I suppose you could also line the pan with parchment paper to make it easier to turn out the loaf, but you probably won't get any crust on the sides of the loaf.
• Make the dough as above.  This time you can make it slightly softer if you want and I recommend using the honey - the slightly softer, well-rise loaf seems to suit this cooking best.  I always use vital wheat gluten if it's available.
  
• Put the dough in the pan and press it down to fit.  Put the lid on and let the bread rise.  One of the nice things with this method, is that you can easly put the pan in the sun! 
  
• When it’s ready to cook, put  flame tamer over a high heat and place the pan on it.  As soon as you smell burning, reduce the heat to moderate.  You want to be able to smell the bread baking, but you don't want to burn the base.  Condensation will form inside the lid - very apparent if you have a glass lid - which is why this loaf turns out quite differently: it is partly steamed.  The crumb will be quite a lot softer than that of the frying pan bread.  The same applies if you're using the frying pan lid.
  
  
  
  
• Cook for a total of 30 minutes and then take the lid off and gently press the dough to see if it's firm. If not, give it another 5 minutes and try again.  I can't really be much more specific because cookers (and pans!) vary so much.  Once you've cooked it this way a few times, you'll get a feel for how long it takes.
  
  
  
  
• Once the bread feels almost cooked, take hold of both handles firmly, and invert the pan over the frying pan.  Now brown the top in the frying pan for 5 minutes or so.
• Alternatively, if you are using the pan lid: ease it off the loaf (hopefully, it won't have risen so much that the dough stuck to it) and lower the heat right down under the flame tamer.  We now want to brown the top of it.  Turn the pan upside down, carefully.   If your pan is non-stick, really well greased, or you've used parchment paper, the loaf will slip out of the pan.  Put it down carefully, return the pan to the heat and put the loaf back into the pan upside down. Put it back over the heat with the lid on for 5 minutes or so.  If, as usually happens to me, the loaf is still stuck to the pan, place the whole lot  over the flame tamer for about 5 minutes.  Hopefully, the loaf hasn't risen above the pan, because in this case it will burn.  If that's the case, you might want to put it on your toaster, or simply forgo browning the top. 
• Once the loaf is browned, shake it out of the pan and put it to cool it on a rack (I use my toaster).  If it's reluctant to come out, leave it to cool down a bit and try to persuade it out by running a knife, with a rounded end around the loaf.  If you leave it too long, the sides and bottom of the loaf will go a bit soggy.  Don't tear it up getting it out.  If the worst comes to the worst, you can always dry it out over the toaster.  Again, you will soon learn the way that suits both your pan and your cooker.

This loaf comes out much higher than the frying pan loaf and is more suited to sandwiches, and toast.

The Perfect Ovenless Loaf

For years, I tried to create perfect frying pan bread. It had to be easy to make, not too fuel-hungry, with a proper crust and of a shape that can be cut into suitable slices for toast or sandwiches. Finally, after more than a quarter of a century of experimenting, I discovered how to make the perfect, ovenless loaf.

To make this paragon of loaves, you need the following:

• a frying pan  
• a ‘1 lb’ loaf tin 
• a stainless steel bowl that will fit over the loaf tin 
• a trivet

The frying pan has to be heavy or else it will warp, and a simple cast-iron or alloy frying pan is the best for this. If your frying pan has a laminated base, experiment carefully to ensure that ‘dry frying’ won’t damage it.

If you don’t have a deep stainless steel bowl, buy one. You’ll find it endlessly useful – for making the bread dough, if nothing else.

The trivet can be the one that came with your pressure cooker. If you don’t have one, use half a dozen large nuts (as in nuts and bolts!) to keep the loaf tin away from the frying pan.

For the ovenless loaf, you need about two-thirds of the Basic Bread recipe, ie

2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

• Make the dough, following the instructions for basic bread, and then put it into a standard, greased, ‘1 lb’ loaf tin. 
• Put the trivet in the frying pan and stand the loaf tin on it. Cover the whole lot with your bowl and let the bread rise.  
• When it’s ready to cook, put the frying pan over a moderate heat and cook for 45 minutes. If you smell burning, reduce the heat, if you can’t smell baking bread, increase it. 
• After the requisite time, turn out the heat and remove the bowl. Leave the loaf to stand for a few minutes and then shake it out of the tin.

That’s all there is to it! And I think you’ll find that it never lets you down, as long as your yeast is fresh and your water isn’t too hot. And of course, the paragon of seagoing loaves, will be made with sea water.

Sadly, I have to add on caveat. My Origo, alcohol cooker doesn’t seem to provide enough heat for this to cook properly.

Therefore I have written a post on the Acceptable Ovenless Loaf for those of us who can't achieve perfection.