Camembert and Rosemary Dipping Pizza: This is a belter for the family. It’s a must-try
My great mate Dougy posted a FB a week or so ago and set a bit of a challenge. Contained within was a cooking video of some guys making this quite unique style of pizza. He challenged me to see what I could do with that concept shown in the video – so here is my idea Camembert & Rosemary Dipping Pizza.
For the first time in forever (hold on a minute was that a line from Frozen?) I made my own pizza dough. So two sides to the recipe here, one for the pizza dough and one for the pizza itself.
Pizza Dough – enough for 2x 12″ pizzas;
- 4 cups of bread flour;
- 1 teaspoon of sugar;
- 1 envelope of dry yeast;
- 2 teaspoons of salt;
- 1.5 cups of warm water (needs to be warm to activate the yeast); and
- 2 tablespoons of Olive oil.
Add all the dry ingredients into a bowl, make a small well in the middle, and then pour in the water, and oil. Then get your hands in there and mix, mix, mix. You should see it start to mold together and not be so sticky, but still pliable. If too wet add more flour, if too dry add more water. Once it starts to form a ball shape, you are done. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave the dough to rest for 1-2 hours to let the yeast work its magic. The first phase of Camembert & Rosemary Dipping Pizza, is checked off.
Pizza Topping;
- 10 or so long strips of streaky bacon, and then cut them into half;
- 1 big whole Camembert cheese – skin and all on;
- 4 garlic cloves – 2 finely sliced and 2 cut in half;
- 4 stalks of fresh rosemary – 3 stripped of their leaves and one stalk cut into half with leaves on;
- Some grated parmesan; and
- Olive oil.
OK, here we go guys – 1-2 hours later now, as the dough has formed nicely. You should see it has risen. Finishing off now the Camembert & Rosemary Dipping Pizza;
- Place some flour on a work surface and then take half the dough and throw it on the flour;
- You are now kneading this, getting some air into the dough, massaging it, turning it over, massaging it – keep flour going in there to stop it sticking;
Amy showing you how it’s done - Again this now should be a nice pliable ball, not sticky – you are ready;
- Take a pizza stone, or pizza tray and flour a little – take the pizza ball and throw it on there. With your hands dig into the middle gently and gradually force the dough out into a circle with a consistent depth. There’s your pizza dough;
- With a sharp knife cut into the base from the edge – do this about 2″ deep and approx every 2″ around the outside;
- Take a piece of bacon and wrap it around that 2″ piece – these will end up being your dipping bread;
Can see what I have done with the cuts in the dough, about every 2″ cut a 2″ deep slice to create ‘spokes’ all around the outside, and then wrap the bacon around those ‘spokes’ as you can see above - Drizzle all over with Olive oil;
- Take a thin slice off the top of the Camembert exposing the sift cheese within;
- Stud that with the 4 halves of garlic and the two pieces of rosemary;
- Sprinkle the remaining thinly sliced garlic and the leaves of rosemary all over the pizza base;
- Sprinkle the grated parmesan over the pizza base;
- Sprinkle a little sea salt all over; and
- Whack that in an oven at 220 degrees for 10-15 minutes until the pizza base is browned and crispy and the cheese is all gooey and melted.
Here she is before oven time – I think it’s looking pretty amazing already
Camembert & Rosemary Dipping Pizza was created. Serve it up on a platter. Then you need to explain that the process of eating is to tear off a piece of the dipping bread, now covered with crispy bacon, and dip it into the melted Camembert cheese. Triple WOW!!! Pizza, bacon, and cheese – come on!!!
We also knocked a couple of other pizzas up with some spare dough we had.
#1 was Amy’s. The same treatment with the dough to make a smaller pizza. Drizzle with Olive oil and then we cubed some cherry tomatoes, added some cured ham, and some sweet basil. Another drizzle of Olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt & cracked black pepper. 10-15 minutes at 200 and here she is – YUMMY!!!
#2 Was a second attempt by me. Again a white pizza, so drizzle the 12″ base with Olive oil. Throw Camembert in the middle. Stud with garlic and rosemary. Sprinkle rosemary all around. Throw over some cured ham, rosemary leaves, and some parmesan cheese all over the base, and then a really good sprinkle of roasted and smoky paprika (see how red it is). So a little spicy addition – this was a CRACKER!!!
