Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Making espresso and steaming milk.. Morning coffee

Here is a little video on how I make one of my morning coffee drinks. A huge cup consisting of a double espresso and some steamy fluffy milk.


The technique is quite simple. Think of blowing bubbles into your chocolate milk when you were a kid.  Insert the valve into cold milk, a cold pitcher helps too. Then gently pull it up towards the surface and you will create foam that will come all the way to the top. It is easy to foam cold milk, so make your foam before you heat the rest of the milk. You can spoon it off the top of the pitcher for cappuccino or hold it back to make a caffe latte. At my cafe we made thousands of coffees and really anyone can do it with a little practice.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

I made a focaccia last night

I decided to make one of my grandma's style pizza or focaccia last night.
Her recipe is similar to Pizza but she added an egg and more olive oil. I kept the oil light in the dough but added  an ample amount on the bottom of the pan before shaping and drizzled some on top of the dough before adding the tomatoes and onions, etc.

The dough.

3 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup of warm water with 1 ample teaspoon of yeast and a pinch of sugar, allowed to sit for a few minutes.
1 egg

Mix all together and knead for a few minutes. Allow to doublein size. Pour an ample amount of olive oil on the bottom of a cookie sheet with edges.. (you can use a baking pan as well)   and spread out. Dough is softer than pizza dough and spreads easily.

Allow to proof again till it gets puffy. Add your tomatoes, and anything else you like. I put kalamata olives and some chunks of asiago cheese, then topped with some sliced onion. My tomatoes had 2 cloves of garlic in them and some salt and had sat in the fridge. I used some of the juice that came out but not all of it.

Once this was done, I put it back to proof again and preheated the oven to 500. 

Bake 12 to 15 minutes.. and enjoy!