What we do with leftover pizza dough

Yesterday we had one of our corporate days with an accountancy firm from Plymouth – a really lovely day with a group of colleagues and friends cooking together, creating a leisurely lunch from what they had made together in the woodfired ovens; very different from the normal lunch snatched at their desk in the office.

As part of the hands-on activities we got them to make some dough, our pizza dough that they turned into cocas, the fabulous flatbreads from Barcelona topped with a variety of veggies from peas to peppers to onions to spinach.

Cocas – a great alternative to pizza

We didn’t get round to using up all the dough they made however so shoved the leftover dough in a covered bowl in the fridge to come back to today.

Unused dough heading to the fridge – cover it up before it goes in

The dough came out of the fridge to come up to room temperature at noon and was smelling pretty good – yeasty and mature. We split it into 2 weighing in at 700g each, shaped them and put them into proving baskets to come up to room temperature and rise.

Split in 2 and put in proving baskets

Make sure to cover the proving baskets – we use a clean teatowel.

Cover the dough

After a couple of hours of quiet rising in the kitchen, the dough was ready.

Checking the dough

When the dough was ready we turned it on to a piece of teflon shaped to fit the Dutch ovens and slashed the tops.

Slashing the tops – use a sharp knife

We had already turned the oven on to 250C – yes the electric oven (!) – and put in 2 Dutch ovens to heat up. Actually 2 fake Le Creuset style pots with lids on from Sainsburys which fit side by side in the oven. After they had heated thoroughly – about 45 minutes – and the oven was up to temperature, the Dutch ovens came out and the slashed bread went into the Dutch ovens with the tops on for 20 minutes.

Into the Dutch oven

2 Dutch ovens fit into our electric oven

After 20 minutes the lids came off and we put them back in the oven to finish for 15 minutes at 230C – remember the doughs weighed in at just 700g hence the shortish cooking time.