Today’s post is about some hot, crunchy, soft, doughy balls of deliciousness, cooked in the oven alongside a perfect homemade spelt pizza. Dipping duties are handed over to a simple thick and creamy garlic coconut butter dip all ready to plunge these spelt dough balls into as soon as they’re out of the oven.
Cook With Your Heart.
Cook with your heart, not your head. Sage advice.
Somebody once said to me “when you cook with your heart, I can tell”. I have a habit of trying to intellectualise or overcomplicate recipes, trying to do something clever, new or different. Why? I’m not Heston-blooming-Blumenthal, nor am I aiming to procure a Michelin star or three. I’m a blogger, one of the custodians of the online world of food, part of the culinary cyber presence put here to blog, to share what my world consists of. My recipes should be about what I desire, what I dream about and make in the course of my life, rather than desperately trying to come up with some fancy pants recipe to knock the socks (and pants) off the next visitor to my site.
It’s Pizza Time.
Today I eschewed all that nonsense, I just made what I wanted to eat, pizza and dough balls. On the side was some garlic butter with a twist (yeah yeah, I couldn’t resist a little modification), it’s made with coconut butter and yoghurt and it’s utterly magnificent. Seriously, I can’t stress how much it was the best bit of the entire meal.
Whilst chomping my way through the dough balls and pizza, I started to wonder why dough balls so damn good? They’re balls of pizza crust, the least desirable part of the pizza. Yet a pack of dough balls is an utterly irresistible proposition, topped with thick gouges of garlicky butter. Maybe that’s the appeal, it’s the butter, the richness, that adds the desirability to these little balls.
Spelt, spelt spelt!
Continuing my love affair with spelt flour, this recipe, uses the same dough and cooking temperature as my spelt pizza bases meaning you cook these alongside your favourite pizza. I can’t stress enough how good homemade pizza is when you buy the most expensive ingredients your wallet will allow. Seriously, it’s the difference between mediocrity and genius.
With a little practice, the dough for this recipe can be knocked together in a few minutes, shortly followed by a treat of a meal that most pizza takeaways can’t even get close to.
Stoned
There is one caveat here. Get a pizza stone. I have a ProCook one, it cost £10 and his transformed the quality of pizza I can make at home. It also made these dough balls cook beautifully top to bottom in no time at all.
Spelt Dough Balls with Garlic Coconut Butter
By Gavin Wren
Serves 2 + 2 pizzas
Uses a pizza stone
PDF recipe card to download or print
Ingredients
1 spelt pizza dough
3 tablespoons coconut butter
3 tablespoons greek yoghurt
1 garlic clove, minced
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
Directions
Soften the coconut butter, then add the other ingredients and mix well. Transfer it to a ramekin or suitable serving dish and then put in the fridge until you’re ready to eat.
Once the dough has risen, divide it into three. Two pieces are for your pizzas, the other is for your dough balls.
Divide it into 8-10 balls, about 1″ in diameter. Place the balls on your pizza stone and cook for 6 minutes. Remove and dunk into garlic butter. Enjoy!
