Too many dishes, and a truncated schedule equals a crazy off the wall experiement that turned out brilliantly.
I’m 100% sure I’m not the only person to ever make it, this is just a super fast / easy one that everyone I’ve fed it too absolutely loves and can’t believe how little effort is involved ;-)
Ready
1 bag ready made pizza crust dough
- Yes, you read that right, ready made pizza crust dough
- No, I’m not insane
- Yes you can do fresh from scratch dough as well
- Fresh made dough works just as well if not better, but this is about a super fast way to do things.
- Sobys in Canada has the ready made dough
- About 750g of dough in what ever form if you don’t have a Soby’s handy
1 Bunch of basil
- Good handfull of leaves when cleaned up (not the small packs that are more common in Canadian stores now)
- You want slightly less basil then prosciutto, but not by much
Around 12 slices prosciutto
- Around 2mm thick (not shaved)
- This equates to “a handful”; Basically you want enough bits in the bread when it’s baked. Don’t forget bread rises, so it’s going to look like a lot before it’s baked (I made this mistake once).
- You get what you pay for here, better quality prosciutto gives a better taste to the bread; I use an Italian prosciutto from the local butcher shop
Olive Oil
Flour
Set
- Cutting board
- Baking sheet
Go
- Hack up the prosciutto, you want smallish bits, nothing larger then half a postage stamp, but don’t go for uniformity. The goal is to have bits through the bread, but they don’t have to be uniform, and they can clump up.
- Same thing for the basil, make sure once you’ve chopped it up that you bruise it gently to allow the flavor out into the bread.
- Once you’ve got the bits chopped, you need to fold them into the dough. Do this in batches until all the basil & prosciutto are in the dough.
- You want things evenly through out the dough as much as possible, but don’t worry about pockets here and there
- Place the dough on the cutting sheet, cover and let it rise for a half hour or so (guage this based on the dough you use)
- After the proving step, bash the air out of the dough and flatten it out onto the baking sheet
- Lightly sprinkle the top with olive oil
- Bake for around 20-25 minutes 350°F or until lightly brown on top
- Remove, cool on a rack until slightly warm
- Cut it up as pleases you
- Serve
What you should know
This is totally brilliant as a starter that always goes over well.
Time it so you can get the bread into the oven once your guests are there, drinks, some small talk, and then the bread that everyone can smell comes out still warm as a perfect starter.
Enjoy!