Sourdough Neapolitan (ish) Pizza

You’ve made your sourdough starter, your regularly turning out loaves and you’ve used the discard to make banana bread and cookies, so I think its time to make pizza. When I think of the holy grail of homemade pizzas I think 75% of people would probably be aiming for something akin to a Neapolitan pie, simple toppings, a light puffy crust and thin but slightly soft base, no hard cracker like pies here please. To be a true Neapolitan pizza there is rules you have to follow and since were making these at home were going to breaking a few of them. The main rules I’m breaking, sorry Italy, is with the dough and with the cooking. To be a true Neapolitan pizza the dough should only include water, salt, yeast (sourodugh is allowed) and flour, im breaking that by adding a little olive oil. Why? I find making pizzas at home the oil helps to make an easy to handle dough that gives a little head start. The biggest rule we are breaking though is the oven, Neapolitan pizzas have to be cooked in a wood fired oven and I live in a small apartment in London, I don’t think my landlord or my neighbours for that matter would be happy if I installed a wood fired oven in my kitchen. Rules are made to be broken so whilst my pizzas will only be Neapolitan-ish there’ll still be in the spirit of those excellent pizzas.

The dough recipe is pretty straight forward and whilst it takes the best part of a day to prepare its pretty hands off and really we are just waiting for most of that time, waiting for the sourdough to do its thing, its slow stubborn thing. Once we have a dough the trickiest part is the cooking or baking, or actually in my recipe I guess a bit of both. The problem with making pizzas at home is that they are normally cooked in ovens that can get as high as 500C meaning the pizzas are cooked in just 60-90 seconds. If you’ve ever tried baking a pizza at home you’ll know it takes much longer in a regular oven. The high heat helps to give the crust its lift, its leopard spotting around the outside and it cooks the toppings just so. In a domestic oven by the time the pizza dough is cooked the toppings are sadly overdone. Part of the reason this happens is how the heat is conducted, in a pizza oven the pie is sat straight on the heat source whereas at home you’re putting the pie on a cold baking tray which has to heat up first whilst the toppings start to cook via ambient heat, its like the cooking is reversed. Thankfully you could bake the pizzas on a baking stone or even better a baking steel but the oven still isn’t hot enough to burnish the crust in the way we all want. The key to success? We don’t start the pizza in the oven, we start it in a frying pan.

Frying pan pizza is nothing new, I learnt about it from the guys at Pizza Pilgrims back in 2013 when they released their cookbook. I cant find earlier mentions of the idea so it may well be their idea, and a great idea it is. To replicate the high heat the idea is to separate out the cooking of the base and the toppings, using a very hot frying pan to cook the base and then popping the pizza under a grill to cook the toppings and brown the crust. It works brilliantly and combined with a great dough you can turn out stellar pizzas. In regards to the frying pan we want to get it HOT so a non-stick is out of the question, as the coatings are not normally designed to get that high. The ideal pan is made of cast iron, ive made pizzas in both classic American style cast iron (a lodge frying pan) and in enamel coated pans ala Le Creuset, both worked great but my preference overall would be traditional black cast iron (I use my le cresuet mainly because the lodge pan I have is a little smaller than I would want my pizzas)

Note: if you like working with bakers percentages I have included those below, if you prefer grams just ignore the percentages

Sourdough Neapolitan (ish) Pizza 
Makes Four 9-10 inch Pizzas

500g 00 Pizza Flour* (100%)
15g fine sea salt (3%)
325ml water, 28-30C (65%)
75g mature sourdough starter*, 100% hydration (15%)
10ml extra virgin olive oil (2%)

*I prefer 00 pizza flour which is 12-13% protein but if you can’t get hold of it you can also use plain or bread flours but you may need to up the hydration a little as they will hydrate a little differently than the finely milled pizza flour. Pizza flour is prized because it creates a delicate crust with a slight crisp texture and a soft interior with a little chew

*If when you start making the dough your starter has fallen and is no longer at its peak (this is what you call mature starter) you can make a levin by simply mixing together 25g of the starter, 25g water at 28-30C and 25g flour (this can be the 00 or bread flour) covering and setting in a warm spot, oven with the light on is ideal, and leaving until doubled in size. Using the above ratios and temperatures this should take 2-3 hours.

To make the dough pour the water into a large bowl and scrape in the mature starter/levain and mix with your fingers briefly to break up a little. Add in the flour, salt and olive oil and use your fingers to mix this to form a shaggy dough. We are not kneading at this point, we just want everything to be hydrated with no pockets of flour. Once mixed scrape off any dough from your fingers and cover the bowl and set aside in a warm spot for 30 minutes to rest. 

Once rested we are going to knead the dough. You can do this by hand for about 10 minutes, in mixer for 5-8 minutes or use the slap and fold method. If you haven’t heard of this technique before its a great method for kneading sticky doughs when you don’t have a mixer. I learnt it originally from Richard Bertinet (who has excellent bread books should you want more reading) which makes sense as this is often known as the French method. Basically you scrape the dough out onto the worsurface. Both hands go under the ought, scooping it up turning it over and slapping it dough on the counter (this basically tuns it over) the dough is then stretched back towards you a little and then folded over on itself. This motion is repeated over and over again for about 8 minutes or until the dough looks smoother and is nice and elastic. I don’t have any pictures to illustrate this technique and its a little hard to understand but if you watch the video its much clearer. 

Once the dough is kneaded use a dough scraper to form the dough into a ball and place seam side up into a bowl very lightly greased with olive oil. Cover the bowl and set aside somewhere warm (26-27C is perfect) for the moment. After 30 minutes, using the techniques we learnt making our first loaf of sourdough bread, were going to preform a set of stretch and folds to build in more strength. Cover the bowl and leave for another 30 minutes before doing a second, and final, set of stretch and folds. Cover the bowl and place back in its warm spot and leave for another three hours, a total of 4 hours. 

After 4 hours you should be able to see some signs of fermentation, even if the dough hasn’t risen significantly. The dough should have a slight domed appearance and there should be lots of fermentation bubbles over the surface. Carefully turn the dough out onto the worksurface and use a dough scraper to divide into 4 pieces (you can weigh these if you’re looking for perfectly portioned pieces). Form the dough into balls, trying to make the shaping nice and tight so the skin on the outside of the dough is taught. 

Once divided and balled you need to decide if you’re going to use all four of the pizza balls tomorrow or if you want to freeze them to use at a later date. If using tomorrow simple place them into a lightly floured container, a high walled plastic box is good for this or a baking tray with high sides, something that means when covered the lid or clingfilm wont touch the dough. If freezing the balls I like to place these into small individual plastic tubs greased with little oil. Either way once in their new resting place the dough needs to sit for a further four hours, again in a warm spot around 26-27C is ideal. Once out second four hour stint is up you should once again be able to see signs of fermentation. If in the individual containers you should be able to see some rise and bubbling on the sides and if on the floured tray you should see the dough has spread out a little and there is fermentation bubbles on the surface as before. For the dough you want to use later place the containers in the freezer (for up to two weeks) and for the dough you want to use place the container in the fridge for 12-24 hours. You can leave the chilled dough for longer but after 24 hours it can be harder to handle. 

Once your dough has rested for its desired time it needs to come back to room temperature before using, otherwise it’ll be harder to stretch and the chill will affect how it cooks. If using refrigerated dough this means taking out the dough 4-5 hours before you want to use it. If your kitchen is in the low to mid 20’s then room temperature is fine if its colder you’ll want to leave it in a warmer spot. If the dough your using is frozen you need to think a bit further ahead. I take the dough out the day before I want to use it leaving it in there for 12-24 hours to slowly defrost and then as with the regular refrigerated dough take it out 4-5 hours before using. 

When ready to make pizzas get everything set up, get your toppings prepped and your workstation ready. Preheat your frying pan over medium heat for about 5-10 minutes (this should get it about 300C), it wants to be about as hot as you can get it. Turn on your grill and set a rack just below, giving you enough space to fit the frying pan. 

Carefully remove a portion of dough from its container (dough scraper is good for this if you chilled the dough on a tray) and place onto a floured surface, dusting the top of the dough too. Press your fingers into the middle of the dough, leaving the outside inch or so untouched. To stretch the dough I place it on the back of my fists, resting it on my knuckles and gently stretch it as I turn the dough. You don’t want to use a rolling pin as you’ll deflate the dough and you’ll have wasted all that time. Once stretched to about 9-10 inches carefully transfer it to the pan. The base will start to cook immediately so as soon as the base is in top it with your tomato sauce (recipe below) spreading to the edges but leaving the now puffed up crust clear. I don’t add the cheese yet because I find it releases too much water if cooked for too long. Use a spatula to keep an eye on the base and as soon as it has nicely browned spots on the base, working quickly, add your toppings. This entire cooking process should take 2 minutes, 3 max. Carefully lift the frying pan under the grill and cook until the cheese has melted and the crust is browned. With this method you wont get the leopard spotting you associate with Neapolitan pizza but it will brown and I personally like to take it pretty far so there are nice dark spots around the pizza. Remove the pan from the grill and immediately transfer the pizza to a plate. Finish with a drizzle of oil and some fresh basil (you can add the basil before hand but because the pizza cooks for longer than in a restaurant oven I prefer adding it after cooking). 

Tomato Sauce
400g can San Marzano (or good quality tinned plum) tomatoes
Large pinch flaked sea salt
2 crushed garlic cloves
1/2 tsp crushed chilli flakes

For the sauce place all of the ingredients into a bowl and use your hands or a hand blender to make a sauce, using your hands is more traditional and will give a sauce with more texture and using a hand blender will make a smoother sauce.

Cheese
For the toppings the one thing I always struggled with was the cheese. Mozzarella is obviously the cheese easiest for us home pizza makers to get our hands on and over the years I’ve tried so many types and they all had problems. Fresh ball style mozzarella from the supermarket or deli tastes great but in a home oven it leaves behind so much liquid it makes for very very soupy pizzas and not in a good Neapolitan way. Pre-grated mozzarella that comes in bags had the opposite problem, it was so dry (often coated in starch to stop it sticking) it just kind of stayed the same. Thankfully I accidentally stumbled on a mozzarella that is the best of both worlds. It’s a block mozzarella called Galbani Cucini thats sold at Waitrose and on Ocado and Amazon. When you see American recipes for call low moisture mozzarella I think this is close as us brits are going to get. It releases next to no water when cooked, but if its cooed for too long it tends to melt away into the pizza, hence my method for adding the cheese just before it goes under the grill. 

Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookie

We’ve been in lockdown almost six weeks now and whilst its looking like restrictions might be loosened a little in the coming weeks the internets new obsession with sourdough shows no signs of abating. As more and more of you join the sourdough bandwagon there is one question that raises it head regularly, and that is how to prevent waste. Sourdough starters are hungry little beasts and they eat flour like they don’t realise its like gold dust right now. Throwing out that discarded starter really feels like a waste right now and surely there is something we can do to reduce that. 

Reducing Waste
If you’re not going to be baking with the starter more than once a week, which is normal for most people, feeding the starter daily is going to produce the most possible amount of waste. Thankfully there is a few ways we can reduce the amount of feedings the starter needs to survive. The easiest of these, and what I would suggest you do, is simply refrigerate the starter when its not in use. As you will have learnt fermentation needs a warm environment to happen, or at least happen at the speed we like to happen, and simply reducing its ambient temperature slows it down. Placing it in the fridge slows the process down enough that it doesn’t need anywhere near as many feeds. Some people advise taking the starter out for a feed once a week, some every other week and some monthly. My guideline is when you remember give the starter a feed, trying not to leave it too long between each feeds. The process to do these feeds is simple, take the starter out of the fridge and discard and feed as normal. Before you put the starter back in the fridge leave it at room temperature for a couple hours to let the fermentation get a head start and then refrigerate until you either want to bake with it or you think it needs another feed. When you want to bake with it I take out the starter and give it a couple rounds of feeds to bring it back to full strength. The other ways you can reduce feeding is reducing the temperature of water used for the feeds to slow down the fermentation, you can also keep back less than 25g of starter when you feed. Both of these methods slow down the starter meaning it will likely only need one feed a day instead of the two a healthy starter normally needs. 

Discard Recipes
The other thing you can do to prevent waste is of course use that discard in a recipe. If you think about it the starter is 50% flour and 50% water so it should be easy to use in recipes that call for flour and some sort of liquid. You can turn the discard into a whole manner of recipes, including crackers, crumpets and a whole host of simple recipes like pancakes, waffles and even banana bread muffins. When you feed the starter and scrape the starter into a separate container and pop it in the fridge until you have enough for your recipe. Dont leave it in there for longer than a few days, if you want to store it for longer some people even freeze the discard so they can bake with it later. The general rule is take the weight of the starter discard you have and divide this number by two, substituting it for an equal amount of flour and liquid in your recipe. Whilst this works easily in lots of recipes a chocolate chip cookie might not be the first thing that springs to mind but let me tell you, it may be my favourite way to use the sourdough discard. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies
If we follow the above rules for baking with sourdough discard we run into a issue straight away just looking at the ingredients. Chocolate chip cookies include flour but they don’t normally include any liquid so to use the discard we need to creative. We need to find the water in the recipe to remove. Thankfully cookies include two ingredients that contain significant water, butter and eggs. Butter in the Europe is generally around 82% fat and the remaining 18% is water. Removing that water is actually easy, all we need to do is brown it. You can tell you’ve removed the water by weighing the finished brown butter. This recipe is based on the one in my first book and it uses 225g of butter, so if we have cooked off all the water the finished butter will weigh 185g, meaning we have lost 40g of water. 40g of water loss means we can use 80g of starter reducing the flour weight called for in the recipe by 40g to match the water. To reduce the amount fo water even further we can remove the egg whites. UK size large egg whites are 40g and this recipe originally called for 2 large eggs so by simply removing the yolks we’ve removed another 80g of water weight (I used the whole egg white as the weight to keep things simple) meaning in total we can use 240g of sourdough discard in the recipe. This is great for two reasons. One, 240g is a good amount of discard (about 2.5 days worth if you’re following my recipe) and two, its enough discard to add a decent amount of flavour. In this recipe the tang from the starter goes brilliantly with the chocolate and adds a new dimension of flavour to the recipe. Talking of chocolate for these cookies I was lucky enough to have a bag of Pump St’s brilliant Jamaica 75% chocolate feves on hand, which they’ve just started selling to the public in 1kg sized bags, and which made for exceedingly good cookies.

Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 25 cookies

225g unsalted butter, diced
380g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp flaked sea salt
220g caster sugar
220g light brown sugar
3 large egg yolks
240g sourdough starter discard (100% hydration)
1 tsp vanilla extract
500g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

To make the cookies we first need to brown the butter. Don’t be tempted to skip this because this isn’t just done for flavour it also removes the water content from the butter which is being replaced by the stater, if you skip this step the resulting recipe will have a very different texture. Place the butter into a saucepan and over medium/high heat cook until the butter melts, bubbles and then foams. Keep a close eye on it as it can burn quickly, when the milk solids have browned the water will have been evaporated off so remove from the heat and set aside for 30 minutes or so, to cool slightly. Once browned you should have 185g unsalted butter left (thats if using butter with an 82% fat content). Whilst the butter is browning place the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large bowl and whisk together to combine.

When ready to make the cookies place the butter and sugars into a large bowl and using an electric mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk for a couple minutes to combine and to break up any lumps. Add the egg yolks and whisk for 2-3 minutes on medium/high. Don’t worry if this looks separated or greasy at the moment, it will come together once we’ve added the starter. Place the bowl on your scale and measure in the required sourdough discard, adding the vanilla as well. Mix in for a few minutes or until the mixture becomes smooth and fully combined, it should look a little like a thick cake batter. Add in the flour mixture and mix in on low speed, just until everything comes together as a dough. Finally, switch to the paddle attachment and add the chocolate, mixing briefly until evenly distributed. Press a sheet of clingfilm onto the surface of the cookie dough and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before baking (my preferred time frame to bake these is between 4-24 hours). 

Note: With my regular cookie recipes I will leave the dough in the fridge for up to three days but with these remember that even though the discard may be less active than your usual starter you are adding sourdough to fresh flour so overtime the dough will ferment a little more, so the longer you leave the dough the stronger the finished flavour. 

When ready to bake preheat the oven to 180C (160C Fan) and line a couple baking trays with parchment paper. Roll the cookies into balls roughly 70g in size, placing 6 per baking tray, with plenty of space between each one as these will spread. Sprinkle the cookies with a little flaked sea salt. 

Bake in the preheated over for about 16-18 minutes or until the cookies are lightly browned around the outside. If the cookies come out a little puffy looking give the baking tray and firm tap on the counter to help them flatten a little. Allow to cool on the baking tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Stored in a sealed container these will keep for 4-5 days. You can also freeze these balls of cooke dough for up to a month, baking straight from frozen with just a minute or two of extra bake time. 

Lockdown Tips

This recipe makes 25 cookies which is a lot, so you can happily reduce the recipe by half (using just 1 egg yolk).

Once the dough is chilled and you’ve rolled them into balls you can freeze these for up to a month. To freeze place the balls onto a parchment lined baking tray that will fit in the freezer. Freeze the cookies until frozen solid, at this point the cookies wont stick together so you can add them to a freezer bag or Tupperware to save on space. 

For the chocolate I normally like a high quality dark chocolate but you can really use whatever you have, be that a milk or dark, bars, chips or wafers. Each one will make a slightly different cookie with different textures and tastes but they’ll all be great.

Mastering Flaky Pie Dough - Strawberry & Rhubarb Galettes

Lockdown has been interesting, for one I am cooking and baking more than ever and thats saying something. I bake for a living but right now I never seem to leave the kitchen and the sheer amount of washing up is making me go a little stir crazy. Thankfully I am not the only one baking, the internet is flooded with new homemakers and the recipes they are tackling. The swaths of sourdough bakers, the banana bread fanatics and just those who have never baked before. I, for one, am thrilled that more of you are in the kitchen and I hope this new baking obsession is a permanent addition to your routine. For those new bakers out there I wanted to post some recipes that help build up your skills and give you building blocks to give you confidence in the kitchen.

Everyone should have a good flaky pie dough in their arsenal of recipes, once you learn how to make pie you open up a world of recipes and whether you want to use it for sweet or savoury this is my go-to recipe. You’ll notice there is a little sugar in the dough and whilst you could remove it for savoury pies I’d suggest leaving it in. Not only does the sugar act as a type of seasoning, helping give the dough a great flavour, it also helps with browning. 

The biggest thing I can teach you when making a flaky pie dough, or most pastry recipes for that matter, is that temperature is the most important thing and that temperature is normally cold. Keeping the butter cold helps ensure a light and flaky pastry. Butter includes water and as the pastry bakes the water content will evaporate and if the butter is handled properly this evaporation will lead to super flaky pastry. So don’t be worried, if the pastry begins to stick, starts to warm up, don’t panic simply throw it back in the fridge until you can work with it again. 

Now that you’ve mastered pie dough what should you make? Of course you can jump straight to a classic pie, I think a galette is a great starting point. Galettes are meant to be rustic so perfection isn’t needed and when your learning how to work with dough galettes wont mind clumsy shaping or a little heavy handed crimping. These are individual pies that are chilled out and don’t have any cares. For the filling I found some end of season rhubarb and early season strawberries over at Borough Market, which I am lucky to have in my neighbourhood. This combo is one of my favourites and whilst it is delicious without much adornment I love to add a little vanilla plus depending on my mood a couple other additions. Cardamom goes brilliantly in this recipe but today I kept things simple and added a small amount fo almond extract. I don’t use the extract for a strong punch of flavour but a subtle layering of flavour that makes these extra special.

Flaky Pie Dough
Makes enough for 1 double crust pie or 8 individual galettes

300g plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp fine sea salt
250g unsalted butter, diced and chilled
6-8 tbsp ice cold water
2 tbsp vodka
1 large egg, for egg wash
demerara for decoration

Strawberry and Rhubarb Filling
350g strawberries
350g rhubarb
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)
125g caster sugar
1 1/2 tbsp cornflour
80g ground almonds

To make the pastry place the flour, sugar and salt into a large bowl and mix to combine. Add 1/4 of the butter and toss to coat. Using your fingertips, rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. This portion of the butter helps to make the finished pastry tender, the remaining butter will add the flakiness.

Add the remaining butter and toss in the flour mixture. Using your fingertips, press each piece of butter flat. Put the bowl into the freezer for 10 minutes to firm up, keeping the butter cold is key to making a super flaky pastry. If the butter becomes too warm it will get worked into the dough and you’ll make something with a more biscuity texture. Pour the vodka into a small jug with the ice cold water. Remove the bowl from the freezer and pour over the water mixture a couple tablespoon at a time, stirring with a butter knife. Your not looking to form a ball of dough, you want a mixture that is clumping together without any pockets of dry flour. You may need a little more or less water that is why it is important to add the liquid in stages. Tip the dough out onto the worksurface and use your hands to briefly bring together with your hands. Using your hands will warm the dough up a little so place onto a plate and chill in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.

On a lightly floured worksurface, roll the dough into a rectangle (roughly 15cm x 40cm) then roll it up into a fat sausage. Cut the dough into two pieces and form into flat discs, wrapping in clingfilm and chilling for about an hour before using. This rolling process is a way to build in extra layering, and is an idea based on Portuguese custard tart bakers in Lisbon and methods for flaky buttermilk biscuits in the American South.

For the pastry roll out one piece of pastry at a time, on a lightly floured worksurface, until about 3mm thick. To ensure you get as many discs of pastry from the dough as possible on the first roll I like to roll into a rectangle roughly 6 inches wide. Cut out three 6 inch round discs of pastry and place them onto a parchment lined baking tray and refrigerate until firm. Set the scraps aside for the moment. Repeat with the second piece of dough. Gather the scraps together and refrigerate for an hour before rolling out and cutting out the remaining 2 discs of pastry. 

For the filling cut the rhubarb into small slices, 1/2-1cm thick. Cut the stalk from the strawberries and cut into quarters. Place the fruit into a large bowl and stir in the sugar. Set the bowl aside to allow the fruit to macerate. After 30 mins pour the fruit and juice into a fine mesh strainer set over a saucepan. Once all the juice has drained into the pan set the fruit back in the bowl. Place the pan over medium/high heat and reduce by two thirds then turn off the heat. Place the cornflour into a small bowl and pour over a little of the fruit juice, whisking to combine to form a slurry. Pour this mixture back into the pan and stir to combine, if using add the vanilla bean paste and almond extract at this stage. Pour this mixture over the fruit and stir to combine. 

To assemble place a spoonful of ground almonds onto a disc of pastry and spread into a thin layer, leaving the outer inch clear. This almonds are not there to add lots of flavour but to absorb any excess juice and keep the pastry crisp. Top with some of the fruit mixture. Fold the pastry border up and over the fruit, crimping as you fold (watch the video for a really helpful view of how I do this). Place the galettes onto a parchment lined baking tray and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until the pastry is firm. 

Whilst the galettes are chilling preheat the oven to 220C (200C Fan). When ready to bake brush the pastry with a beaten egg and sprinkle liberally with demerara or sanding sugar. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes before reducing the heat to 200C (180C Fan) and baking for a further 10-15 minutes or until the pastry is golden. Remove from the oven and cool on the baking tray for a few minutes before serving warm and allow to cool fully before serving at room temperature. 

Once baked the galettes will be best served on the day made but will be great for a few days after but the pastry underneath will lose some of its crispness. 

Frosé Sorbet

I think I can say with certainty that everyone is bored of being stuck inside, within our own four walls, bored of our new normal. With the weather being rather glorious right now, but being unable to enjoy it at all, I have been thinking about the summer and the hope that lockdown conditions might be eased enough that we will be somehow able to enjoy it. Because that dream isn’t possible right now I want to get us out of our homes through food. To let you imagine, even if only for a short while, that we are somewhere warm, relaxing by a pool with a glass of something chilled as we relax doing nothing. The dessert that I think gets us there is a summer sorbet served with a glass of crisp cold rosé or even better, combined together to make a ‘frose’ sorbet, a frozen rosé sorbet. Frosé was the drink that seemed to be everywhere last year and I thought right now was the perfect time to turn that idea into a dessert. This sorbet version, a blend of strawberries, pears and rosé is a wonderful fruit filled version of Frosé thats easy to make and low on ingredients.

Its a real simple dessert needing only 4 ingredients with minimal effort and skill. You do need an ice cream machine but ill talk about how to make the sorbet without a machine in the recipe. For the wine I would suggest using a crisp dry rose, something that isn’t super sweet as we don’t want to make make an overly sweet dessert, sorbet is on the sweeter side to start with. For the fruit it is also worth trying to use ripe strawberries and pears. There is nothing worse than a bland hard strawberry or a rock solid pear that tastes of nothing. Adding sugar to either won’t magically improve them, although it will obviously up the sweetness level, so try and use fruit that already tastes great.

Frosé Sorbet
Serves 6

600g strawberries
600g pears (I like Williams or conference)
300ml dry rosé wine
200g caster sugar

Making sorbet means we need to make two elements, a sugar syrup and a fruit puree. To make the syrup place the wine and sugar into a saucepan and place over medium/high heat. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring to help dissolve the sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved cook for a couple minutes more until the mixture has reduced to about 350ml’s worth of liquid. Traditionally a sugar syrup is made with equal parts sugar and water but I wanted to increase the amount of flavour in the syrup so by starting with a greater amount of wine we can cook it for longer, reducing the water content but concentrating the wine flavour. Pour the syrup into a jug and set aside for the moment.

For the puree, cut off the stems from the strawberries and cut into quarters. For the pears, cut off the top and bottom, cut into quarters and remove the core. Place the fruit into a food processer or blender and puree until smooth. Pour the puree through a fine mesh sieve to remove any pulp or seeds. The remaining puree should weigh about 500g.

Pour the syrup into the puree and stir together to combine. If you want to make the recipe without even following a recipe I have a cool trick for you, a way to learn if the concentration of sugar is correct. If the sorbet doesn’t have enough sugar it will freeze more like ice and will give more of a granita like finish. If the sugar level is too high it won’t freeze properly and you’ll end up with a slushie. When you get the sugar levels just right you’ll have a beautifully smooth but scoopable sorbet. To test pour the sorbet base into a jug and then get a spotlessly clean egg, yes an egg really, and gently place it into the jug. If the egg sinks there isn’t enough sugar, it it floats well above the surface there is too much. What you’re looking for is the egg to be floating just enough that a little bit of it pokes above the surface, you should see a roughly 2.5cm wide circle of the egg peaking through the surface of the sorbet. Knowing this you can make a sorbet from any fruits without ever using a recipe.

Place the sorbet base into the fridge to cool for at least 4 hours. Chilling it before it’s churned means it will churn faster creating a nicer texture.

When ready to churn use the manufacturers instructions to churn in an ice cream machine. When soft but holding its shape, looking a little like a thick slushie, turn off the machine and scrape into a freezable container (I like to use loaf pans), cover and freeze for at least 4 hours or until solid.

Homemade sorbets don’t last as long as ice cream so this needs to be consumed within a few days of making.

Making Sorbet Without An Ice Cream Machine

Make as above but when it comes to churning pour the chilled base into the loaf pan and place straight into the freezer. Every 30 minutes or so take the sorbet out of the freezer and use a fork to stir the sorbet, breaking up any big icy patches before returning to the freezer. Repeat this process until the sorbet is almost frozen then leave in the freezer until firm. The resulting sorbet won’t be as smooth as one made with a machine but it will still be a wonderful homemade dessert perfect for warm summer days.