Julie Goodwin's Mini Pizza Scrolls

I'm Julie Goodwin, and I'm going to make mini pizza scrolls, which work beautifully as a finger food for a party and are equally good in the lunchbox. I'm going to make a yeasted dough. I tend to shy away from this because I think it's going to be complicated, but it's really not. It's very, very straightforward and actually quite fast. To begin, I'm going to put some warm water into a bowl. It's important that this isn't boiling out of the kettle, otherwise it will kill the yeast. So it needs to be sort of tap hot. And by the time it goes into a cool bowl, it's going to be about right. And in with one sachet or a teaspoon of dried yeast and a bit of sugar. And I'm just going to stir that and leave it alone for 10 minutes. And it's going to start to froth. So that's developed a nice sort of frothy little raft on top. It's time to add some flour. So I've got two and a quarter cups here of plain flour. If you've got bread flour, use that. But plain flour will work in this recipe. Bread flour is just strong flour, so it's been milled a bit more. It's also pasta flour, double zero flour. It's the same sort of thing, but it's just a little bit stronger. For this recipe, it's fine. Plain flour works. Salt, a little bit of olive oil. I'm going to give that a good mix. It's going to make a very sticky dough. I'm just going to bring all of that together and then tip it out onto a lightly floured surface and give it a workout. You don't want too much flour here because it will become absorbed into the dough and you don't want it to take on too much flour or your dough will be dry. So to knead it, I'm going to use the heel of my hand in sort of a downward pushing motion, and I'm going to knead it and turn it all sort of in one movement. And I'm going to do that for around about five minutes until this becomes quite smooth and elastic. If it gets a bit too sticky, just pat your hand with a bit of flour. But again, try not to introduce too much flour into this recipe. And I'll do a bit more now. So you can see it's sticky. It's kind of lumpy. It's raggedy. That's going to become really smooth. And that's how you know when it's ready to put aside again. You can do this in a stand mixer with a dough hook, but I appreciate the workout. OK, so after a few minutes of vigorous kneading, you can see that it's a lot smoother. It's not as raggedy. It's not as sticky. That's the time to put it into a bowl. So I'm going to lightly spray that with olive oil. Pop it in there. And I'm just going to cover that to keep it cozy and warm. And we need to put it into a warm spot. It can be a bit tricky in the cooler months. You might need to pop it under the heat lamp in your bathroom or in an oven. If you turn your oven on as low as it goes and keep the door open, that's a warm environment or a nice sunny spot in your house. Basically, if it's warm enough for your cat to lie there, it's probably good for your dough. So after about an hour, this is what happens. Look at that. And now comes the fun part. You get to punch it. So we're going to punch down and just knock the air out of that so I can then divide it into balls and get on with our pizza scrolls. There we go. So you want to really deflate it like that and tip it back out onto the surface and divide it. All right. I'm going to cut this into four balls because we're going to make four separate little rolls of these mini pizza scrolls. So to get the balls as even as possible, I make it into sort of a regular shape so I can see what half of that is and then I can see what half of that is. So now for each of these, I'm going to roll them into a strip that's about 30 centimetres long, which is, you know, roughly the length of an A4 sheet of paper and about 12 centimetres wide. This dough's got some lovely bubbles in it, so I know it's going to be really light and beautiful. So once that dough is roughly long enough, just shape it a little bit so it's a sort of a regular shape so that you can roll them nice and evenly. Now you're going to take about a quarter of your passata, which is pureed tomatoes, and spread it along. And what you need to leave is a gap along this top edge here of about three centimetres, because that's where the dough is going to kind of stick together. And then we're going to sprinkle some oregano over that and some salt over it with some grated tasty cheese or cheddar cheese. Of course, you could use whatever cheese you like. Mozzarella works well in these as well. And for a bit of a grown up finger food, I've decided to go with a spicy pepperoni for this one. If you're making it for school lunches, you could use ham, you could use bacon. You could keep it with just tomato sauce and cheese. For little kids, they tend to like it a bit plain. Or you could put in some veggie options too, maybe some spinach or even a bit of feta, maybe some, you know, cooked mushrooms if you've got some of that hanging around in the fridge. But yeah, about a quarter of your pepperoni. And then we're going to roll it up. You're going to lift the bottom edge up and over and make sure it's not sticking down to the board. Now lift it over again. Try and keep it a little bit tucked in there because you're going to roll until that dough meets that plain edge over there. And what you'll find is that this dough is soft enough that as you slice it, that's going to sort of seal that together so it won't unroll when you bake it. You're going to cut that into three centimetre lengths. You should get about 10 out of a 30 centimetre roll. Now it's about 30 centimetres and you're going to put them on their side on the baking tray. The end ones are always a little bit weird. That's OK. So I'm just going to sit those next to each other, barely touching, if at all, just a little kiss to its neighbour. And we're just going to repeat that with the other three balls of dough and you'll end up with 40 little mini pepperoni pizza scrolls. So I've got the oven heated to 200 degrees. I'm just going to pop these in for 20 minutes until they're puffed and golden. So there you go. They're beautiful, they're golden, they're puffed up. It smells like a pizzeria in here. And these are going to be a really popular little snack the next time you have a figure food party. If you're going to use them for lunchboxes, I would say let them cool down and freeze them on the day you make them. And that way, when they come out of the freezer and into the lunchbox, they'll be as fresh as the day they were made.