Pizza rolls are a very popular street food and this tear-and-share traybake makes a great and always welcome addition to an informal dinner buffet, a picnic or a kids’ birthday party.
Common fillings include the usual tomato sauce, mozzarella and often ham; however, this recipe uses one of my favourite combinations based on ripe red sweet peppers and onions. The vegetables are simmered before being blended to a cream: the cooking brings out their sweetness and makes them easier to digest. The creamed filling also makes a delicious dipping sauce, so don’t throw away any leftovers!
The joy of a crumpet lies in the little holes that cover the surface which, when toasted, hold the melted butter that is slathered over. Crumpets are not always something we consider making from scratch, but they’re incredibly easy and, as with most things,
so much better when homemade.
Kneading by hand: A heavily enriched dough, like this one, will naturally be on the stickier side. Using an electric stand mixer for kneading will be a lot easier, but it is not impossible to knead this dough by hand. All you need is an extra 1/4cup of bread flour on standby.
If we all ate fika, I think the world would be a much better place. Fika is a Scandinavian ritual, like afternoon tea. Traditionally, a range of buns are served that you share with your neighbours, people you work with or friends (imaginary or otherwise). It’s such a great custom and even the mighty Volvo plant in Sweden stops for fika every day. What follows here are the recipes for three different flavour buns, all made from the same dough, but with different fillings (butters) and glazes. We recommend the Milky Way glaze with the cinnamon bun, the coffee glaze with the cardamom and orange bun and the orange glaze with the Nutella bun, but it’s totally up to you. We’ve given quantities for the butter and glaze recipes, but to be honest, you can adjust them depending on whether you want a subtle hint of flavour or a big mouthful, so don’t feel tied down to the measurements.
THE MAN’OUSHE (SINGULAR for mana’eesh) is the quintessential street food of the Levant. Wherever you go in the streets of Damascus, Beirut, or Jerusalem, you’ll see professionals, students, families, and their children all enjoying piping hot flatbreads, usually slathered with herbaceous za’atar. They’re eaten while walking down the street on the way to work or school, sitting in cafés, or around the breakfast table. Among my favorite memories in Syria and Lebanon is heading to one of the corner bakeries and ordering flatbreads by the dozen. Slid right out of the oven into pizza boxes, my cousins and I would rush back to an aunt or uncle’s home and devour them without a single word exchanged.
Turning flour, water, and yeast into crusty, airy rolls is one of the hardest bits of kitchen wizardry around. We want to make the process foolproof.
For home cooks, pita is a great entry into the world of flatbreads, even into baking in general.
Recipes from a few of the most important cookbooks exhibited at the University of Michigan.