Costco in the UK sell these delectable tubes of precooked loveliness. They are so good that you really need put some extra effort into the presentation.

So line up your food toys cause we are going to EAT:

Panasonic Breadmaker
Potato Chipper
Tefal ActiFry

First we need some proper brat buns, so into the bread maker goes:

¾ tsp yeast
400g strong white flour
1 tsp sugar
15g Butter
1 tsp salt
280 ml of water

This will make 6 buns.

2 ½ hour later the beeping in the kitchen tells you the dough is done and it is time to get messy. The machine has done its work and produced a ball of dough.

Get some more flour; you will need the bag if you do not want to wear the dough as gloves. Sprinkle some around the edge of the pan and then some on top. Dust your hand with flour and punch down in the middle and grab the paddle that is in the bottom of the pan and pull it out. Now make your hand flat and shove the flour you sprinkled around the edge down to the bottom of the pan all along all four sides. Flour both hands again and then you should be able to pull the dough ball out of the pan. Pat it into a ball adding flour to any stick bits. Now grab the big ball in the middle with the thumb and index finger squeeze to make two balls. Repeat until you have 6 balls in the pan. Now get some flour and cover one of the balls and proceed to push your thumbs up into the bread as you pull back on the top with your fingers (video to follow soon). Use more flour if it gets sticky until you have a fairly elastic ball of dough. Now hold it by one end and pull down on it to elongate the shape. Then using the thumb and index finger of the other hand press on the fat bits. Cover with flour on both sides and then grab the other end and press the fat bits again. Sooner or later you will end up with and elongated flat shaped dough. Kind of like this:

Ok so they are really ugly, but I did not say this was beautiful cuisine, my emphasis is on EAT!

Off they go to a warm place or your airing cupboard if you live in the UK. They will be in there for about 30 to 45 minutes (ok I have to say the baking catch phrase…) or until about doubled in size. They never get that big until they are stuffed into the oven so just put them somewhere for 30 minutes and get on with dinner.

Now turn your oven on to GM7 or 220C or 425F and put a shelf about ¾ way up the stack. BTW now is a good time to do some dishes as heating the water will help the airing cupboard to warm up and raise the bread. When the oven gets to heat it is time to put the dough in for 15 minutes, and they should be brown on top and cooked through.

At about 40 minutes before trough it is time to make the French Fries. Yes I said French Fries and not chips as they say here in the UK. As you can see the Chip Maker has two dies, one for Americans and one for Brits.

The key thing when using the Tefal ActiFry is that you need to remove starch and also have very dry potatoes. Wash them really well in cold water to remove the starch.

Then use a tea towel and push them around to make sure they are dry.

Now at 30 minutes before dinner the potatoes go into the Tefal ActiFry and cover with at most a tablespoon of olive oil. This will produce French Fries at less then 3 percent fat and that fat is olive oil, so almost good for you.

The brat buns are done and looking really good.

Scratch the square and think of fresh homemade bread

Ok just 15 minutes before the fries are done put a grill pan on the stove at medium heat. Add some olive oil and with a paper towel cover the pan with a thin layer of oil. Take your brats out of the package and wash in cold water and dry with a paper towel. Then place in the grill pan. It will take 2-3 minutes on each side to warm and brown the brats. The cool thing is that the Costco brats are square so it is really easy to turn them every two to three minutes without them wanting to roll back.

French Fries are cooked and ready to eat…

So plate that sucker up and let’s EAT:

Now all I need to do is find a baseball game to watch… sod that we are watching Hulk on Movies on Demand through Sky on the XBOX.

I was going to have the 4th brat tonight for dinner, but the kids ate the rest of the buns I think they were saying yuummmm at the time. Enjoy.

And at my house means the kids make the pizza. I just cut meat and vegetables, cook pizza and chicken strips, and then we eat all the pizza we want because were making two 14 inch pizzas with cheap and cheerful chicken strips.

Dough:
1 tsp yeast
600 g Strong White Flour
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
340 ml of cold water

Sauce:
500g jar of Bolognaise Sauce (Dolmio is my favourite)

Toppings:
Baked Ham cut into squares
Shallots chopped
Pepperoni cut into quarters
500 g Grated Mozzarella cheese*

You need to start about 1:45 hours before you want to eat pizza.

I use a Panasonic Breadmaker to make pizza dough, so I whack it all in the pan and set the option to pizza dough and 45 minutes later we have a dough ball. A little olive oil in a bowl spread around with a paper towel and put the dough ball into the bowl and roll it around until covered. Into the airing cupboard, or warm place covered by a dish towel while the oven heats.

Make sure you have two racks as high in the oven as you can get them. Turn your oven up as high as it will go GM 9, 475 F, 240 C. This can take a while so start early.

Put the Bolognaise sauce in a pan that takes a lid on the stove. Get it up to simmer, put the lid on at an angle so the steam can escape and let it bloop, bloop for about ½ hour until it has reduced by half. I know this makes a mess of your stove, but it is another one of the things you have to do to remove water so you do not get a soggy crust.

While the dough is rising, the sauce is blooping and the oven is finally getting to seriously Hades hot cut up your toppings. If you like sausages on your pizza get some nice quality sausages and cut the skin off and brown into little clumps in a pan at this time.

Prepare the pizza pans (see pans below). Put a small bit of vegetable oil on the pan and spread thinly with a paper towel. Then sprinkle lightly with semolina. This helps the pizza slide off of the pan after they are cooked. It is also another way to get a crispy dry crust.

After about ½ hour of the dough rising in a warm place then flour a board.

Roll out ½ of the dough until you have a size about the same as the pan. I find that rolling with my right hand while holding the dough with your left works best. Often dust with flour and turn over to keep from sticking. When rolling, roll well past the edge of the dough as the consistency is very elastic and it needs a bit of force to stretch out.

Now put a couple of spoonfuls of sauce on the pizza base and spread out with the back of a spoon. Once again this is a place where you have to stop putting sauce on before you are think you are done, otherwise you will have too much liquid and the crust will be soggy.

Slam on the toppings, cheese first then anything you want… except sweet corn or fish. Now come on no one really likes this kind of stuff on a pizza so just, just don’t do it.

Into the oven. Put your favourite pizza on the top shelf first as this will be the best one (he he don’t tell anyone). Set the timer for 10 minutes and then swap the pizzas on the shelves and reset for another 10 minutes. Now you have two magnificent pizzas.

So why go through all of this…
It is good fun to cook with your children and/or have them cook for you
It teaches life skills to your children
Cost for Pizza Hut delivers 2 x 14 inch pizzas with multiple topping and two sides £30
Cost for Pizza chez home made 2 x14 inch pizzas with multiple topping and two sides max £15
– nuff said half price

* Ok so I know this is the most expensive and worst quality mozzarella cheese, but it is dry. I hate watery pizza as it makes the crust soggy. We do not have enough really hot dry heat like in a real pizza oven so we must adjust our ingredients accordingly.

Pizza Pans

My favourite pizza pan was given to me by my children for Christmas. They bought it at Lakeland and it is simply amazing. Great thin crust pizza every time and cleans up with hot water and a paper towel. It is a Heartland Bakeware Pizza Pan and was carried by Lakeland but no longer does them. Maybe we can get enough people together to get a shipment from Kansas City in the US.

My other trusty pan is steel with no coating at all. It has never been washed in soap but just hot water. Then a splosh of vegetable oil spread around with a paper towel. This is called a seasoned pan and it hardly ever sticks even though it has no surface on it. But I am afraid I would trade it quickly for another Heartland pan.