My girlfriend Lindsay and I recently watched Jamie Oliver's Happy Days Live, a recording of a live show he toured the world with, in which he makes a pizza from scratch (including the crust)(and the tomato sauce) and bakes it in less time than it takes for a Domino's pizza to be delivered to him on stage. He talks the audience through the incredibly simple recipe, and makes the whole thing look fun. And the end product looks absolutely delicious. 

He also makes a ton of other stuff too. Find this show if you can. It's on DVD. Also check out Jamie Oliver's TED talk. And his website.

So Lindsay tried the pizza dough recipe and it worked brilliantly. She later ventured on to making bread from scratch. We have a bread machine, but she tried doing it all on her own, and it worked even better than anything the machine has made. She's since tried adding ingredients, and came up with a sun dried tomato herb bread which has wowed multiple dinner guests and gets me doing Italian-man-in-a-state-of-gustatory-bliss gestures and facial expressions with every bite.

Let me remind you - this is very easy. You don't need to be an expert or a trained cook to make good food from scratch at home.

Here's the bread recipe:

1 packet of active yeast (or 2 1/4 teaspoon)

1 cup of warm water

2 teaspoon of sugar or honey

2 1/2 to 3 cups flour (I use 2 cups organic unbleached white, the rest organic whole wheat)

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

2 teaspoons of salt (less or more to taste)

handful of sun dried tomatoes (if you use the oil packed ones, use less olive oil)

4-5 cloves of garlic

3-4 pinches of rosemary

3-4 pinches of dehydrated onion (or onion powder)

Add yeast, sugar and water to large mixing bowl. Leave for 5 or 10 minuets until it's all foamy. Toss tomatoes, oil, garlic, salt and spices in a food processor and wiz around a few times till chopped. If you don't have a food processor, mince the
sun dried tomatoes and garlic, add to a bowl with salt and spices with the oil.

Mix in four and the spice/oil mixture, to the water and yeast till it forms a ball. Knead a few times, no need to break your back, adding flour if the dough gets to sticky. Leave the round ball of dough in the bowl and cover with tea towel for about two hours. It should almost double in sixes. Pre-heat over to 400. Oil a baking pan, and put dough in the centre. Bake for about half an hour depending how dense it is. Check by inserting knife or wooden skewer sick to see if middle is dry.