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Oregano: Much More Than a Pizza Spice – What The Medicinal Plant Can do

In most households, oregano is probably better known as a spice than as a medicinal plant. However, the healing effect should not be underestimated. The ancient Greeks already knew how to use oregano for healing.

Particularly important: the essential oils of oregano

While only the leaves of the plant can be used for the spice, regardless of the growing season, the whole plant is used for medicinal purposes and reaches its best harvest time at flowering time. The tannins and bitter substances of the plant, as well as their essential oils, are particularly relevant for the healing effect. The latter include thymol, carvacrol, cymene and borneol.

Oregano mainly helps against digestive problems (in the stomach, intestines, liver or bile) and respiratory diseases and has a general anti-inflammatory effect in the throat and mouth. In addition, oregano oil is considered to be the most powerful natural antibiotic. The gesundheit.de platform recommends oregano tea (a teaspoon of oregano in a quarter liter of water) for various purposes:
Sweetened several times a day against coughs
Against indigestion, unsweetened after steeping for ten minutes
Against inflammation in the mouth and throat: gargle with tea

Oregano: Let it cook for a long time

Oregano is still very popular for cooking and is used as a spice in Mediterranean cuisine. It is important to note that the spice develops its flavor best after long cooking.

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Food

Frozen Pizza, Nutella and Co.: Many Sweets and Ready Meals Are Really That Harmful

Researchers have found that palm oil promotes the spread of cancer cells. Although the substance is so dangerous, it is found in many foods.

A new study shows how dangerous many foods and other everyday products are. Because palm oil is found in many foods, such as pizza, chocolate spread or baby food. But also in shower gel, hand cream and detergent. According to a new study, the palmitic acid contained in palm oil can promote the spread of metastases – and thus the spread of cancer.

Palm oil in food: Palmitic acid can alter cancer cells

Researchers at the “Institute for Research in Biomedicine” (IRB) in Barcelona have proven that palmitic acid, which is mainly found in palm oil, changes cancer cells. The food industry often uses palm oil as a cheap fat in many finished products. Because: Palm oil tastes similar to butter and gives food a spreadable, creamy consistency. Palm oil is often added to many finished products, sweets and baby food. In the cosmetics industry, surfactants and emulsifiers are made from palm oil components.

But palm oil is not exactly one of the highest quality vegetable fats. It’s fairly high in unhealthy saturated fat and low in healthy unsaturated fat. Furthermore, palm oil has long been suspected of being involved in the development of diseases.
The IRB study now shows how palmitic acid promotes the spread of metastases.

Why does palm fat promote the spread of cancer?

The researchers at the IRB were able to find out in mouse models how palmitic acid from palm fat causes cancer by altering its genome. This increases the likelihood that tumors will spread. Metastasis, or the spread of cancer, remains the leading cause of death in cancer patients. The vast majority of these people can now be treated but not cured.

“There is something very special about palmitic acid that makes it an extremely powerful promoter of metastasis,” IRB director Salvador Aznar-Benitah told the Guardian newspaper. The study, conducted on mice, found that palmitic acid promotes long-term metastasis in oral and skin cancer.

The study noted that there is no evidence to date that all dietary fatty acids can promote cancer metastasis. Other fatty acids such as oleic and linoleic acid, so-called omega-6 and omega-9 fats found in foods like olive oil and flaxseed, did not show this effect. More specifically: None of the other fatty acids tested generally increased the risk of developing cancer. With palmitine, however, this is different.

Breakthrough in cancer research?

In order to spread, cancer cells need certain nutrients. The researchers at the “Institute for Research in Biomedicine” are certain that cancer cells are primarily dependent on fatty acids. In the experiment with the mice, it became clear that oral and skin cancer spread more quickly when the animals were given palmitic acid. Palmitic acid appears to regenerate cancer cells, causing metastases to form.

According to Dr. Helen Rippon, executive director of Worldwide Cancer Research, “a major breakthrough in our understanding of the link between diet and cancer and, perhaps more importantly, how we can use this knowledge to develop new cures for cancer.”

This knowledge could now also help to improve cancer treatments in the future. Because metastases are responsible for about 90 percent of all deaths in cancer patients. As the authors of the study noted, if we now learned more about which foods or components of products promote the spread of cancer, we could possibly reduce the number of cancer deaths in the future

Can’t you just replace palm oil?

Palm oil has long been criticized and raises the suspicion that it promotes the development of diabetes, vascular diseases and cancer. This is due to the high proportion of saturated fatty acids and industrial processing, which can produce carcinogenic substances. If palm oil is heated too much, fatty acid esters are formed, which the “Federal Institute for Risk Assessment” (BfR) has already classified as carcinogenic.

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Food

Frozen Pizza: Is it Also Available in Sustainable and Climate-Neutral?

Pizza always works. Many of us love to eat them – albeit with a guilty conscience. Because frozen pizza doesn’t have a good reputation: it’s unhealthy, the ingredients are anything but regional, and frozen pizza is also supposedly bad for the climate. We looked into the question of whether there are “better” pizzas.

Frozen pizzas are all the rage. Every  eats an average of 13 frozen pizzas a year, and the trend is rising. The favorite variety: salami.

Nevertheless, more and more people are asking themselves when buying pizza: Is ready-made pizza from the freezer okay at all? The suspicion: it has a lot of calories, a bad environmental balance, ingredients that have been widely traveled. We investigated whether frozen pizza really is as bad as it’s made out to be.

Is there a “better pizza” at all?

Our research shows: the range in the freezers of supermarkets and discounters is large, but anyone looking for sustainable frozen pizzas beyond the salami and margarita mainstream has a hard time. Nevertheless: There is now a small and fine selection of organic pizzas, vegan frozen pizzas and even climate-neutral pizzas.

How unhealthy is pizza really?

Whether organic or climate-neutral – pizza is not really healthy, at least not in the frozen version. Due to the mostly white flour, it contains a lot of carbohydrates, but hardly any fiber and few vital substances.

Conventional pizza contains many additives

The list of ingredients for 0815 frozen pizzas contains additives such as antioxidants, stabilizers, acidifiers, emulsifiers and other processed ingredients such as extracts, modified starch or up to six different types of sugar, criticizes the consumer advice center.

Each pizza contains up to 14 grams of sugar. Healthy is different.

Pizza = calorie bomb

Pizzas from the freezer are real calorie bombs – a pizza often contains more than 800 calories. Since people tend to eat up what’s on the plate, moderation is difficult here. If you want to take care of your health and figure, it is better to only eat half or two-thirds of the pizza and save the rest for the next day or two. Families can easily share pizzas and save calories.

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Cooking Tips

Warm Up Pizza: This is How it Tastes Like Fresh Out of The Oven

Reheating pizza is actually quite simple. We’ll show you how to prepare a fresh and delicious meal from the “leftovers” from the day before.

Are you also a fan of cold pizza that you bought the day before? According to chemist Maureen Cooper of Sterling University in Scotland, the cold pizza still tastes good because the tomato sauce keeps the cheese from seeping through to the pizza crust and making it mushy.

Nevertheless, not everyone is enthusiastic about the taste of a cold pizza. With our methods you can get the taste pretty close to that of the day before. And at the same time you are doing something against food waste.

Reheat and spice up pizza

To make your pizza taste a little more “like new”, you can add herbs, vegetables or fresh cheese before or after heating it up:

Herbs and salad: Fresh basil, rocket, thyme or rosemary spice up any pizza. However, be careful not to put basil or arugula in the oven or pan, or they will lose their strong flavor and burn. With the other two herbs this is fine.
Pickled and dried foods: You can halve or cut olives, chili peppers or dried tomatoes into small pieces and spread them on the pizza. You can even put them in the oven, as they develop their flavor well when warm.
Fresh: Garlic and onions give your pizza a very special freshness. If you would like to add some vegetables, for example peppers or mushrooms are suitable.
Mediterranean cheeses: You can even enhance the cheese flavor of your pizza with feta, mozzarella or parmesan. Together with the herbs, olives or tomatoes mentioned above, your pizza will have a particularly Mediterranean flair. All types of cheese can be reheated or put on top afterwards, depending on whether you prefer a melted or fresher taste. Vegan cheese is also suitable.
Extravagant: Many people will have their hair stand on end at this recommendation, but for some, pineapple gives the pizza a very special, exotic sweetness. Canned fruit or vegetables are ready prepared from the tin or rather from the jar and can be processed immediately. Corn or beetroot are also recommended.

Warm up pizza the right way: in the pan or in the oven

Note: If you reheat the pizza in the microwave, it will get pretty mushy.

Reheat pizza in pan:
Heat your pan to medium-high without adding oil.
Add the pizza and cook until the dough is no longer “wobbly”.
Now turn the heat down, add half a teaspoon of water to the bottom of the pan and place a pan lid on top.
After a minute or two, when the cheese melts, your pizza should be ready.
Reheat pizza in the oven:
Place your pizza on a baking sheet. Instead of baking paper, use a more sustainable baking paper substitute.
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
Spray the pizza lightly with water and drizzle some olive oil on top so it tastes fresher and crunchier at the end.
Bake them for about five minutes.

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Cooking Tips

Freeze Pizza Dough: You Have to Pay Attention to That

Freezing pizza dough is useful if you have misjudged the quantity or want to build up a small supply. We’ll explain how to freeze.

Freeze pizza dough in portions

Ideally, you freeze the pizza dough before it has risen – this way the pizza doesn’t get soggy. If you’ve made a lot of pizza dough, you should freeze the dough in the portions you need for one pizza at a time.

When freezing, it is important to pack the dough airtight. This works with cling film or freezer bags, but for the sake of the environment and your health you should avoid plastic. A good plastic-free alternative is a beeswax wrap.

You can freeze pizza dough particularly well in a cake tin: Roll out each portion of dough into a circle and place them in a round cake tin. Always put a layer of baking paper between the flatbreads (you can use the baking paper later).

Then you pack the whole thing airtight, for example in wax paper. The advantage of this method: You can take individual pizza bases straight out of the fridge. They thaw faster thanks to their flat shape and you don’t have to roll them out after freezing.

thawing and shelf life

Well packaged, the pizza dough can be stored in the freezer for up to three months. That’s enough to create a small supply.

You should defrost the dough slowly, ideally over a few hours or overnight in the refrigerator. This allows the pizza dough to rise again. If it has to be quick, you can save yourself the hassle, the pizza will be a bit crispy.

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Food

Pizza Marinara: Easy Vegan Recipe

Pizza Marinara is one of the most original pizza recipes. With just a few ingredients, the vegan pizza variant is quick and easy to prepare. We show you how to prepare pizza marinara.

The secret of this pizza lies in its simplicity. Pizza Marinara is the way of preparing one of the simplest pizzas from Naples. This recipe is traditionally prepared in Italian cuisine without cheese and is therefore suitable for vegans.

For the preparation, the fresh pizza dough is covered with tomato sauce, olive oil, oregano and garlic. When choosing your ingredients, make sure that they come from organic and regional cultivation.

The pizza tastes even better if you grow your own ingredients. You can easily plant garlic and oregano yourself, and tomatoes are also suitable for the balcony and garden.

Pizza Marinara: How to cook it

For this simple recipe you only need a rolling pin in addition to the ingredients. If you have problems with the dough, then read our article on yeast dough with valuable tips.

Ingredients:

250 g flour
125 ml warm water
0.5 pieces of yeast cubes
1 pinch(s) of salt
1 pinch(s) of sugar
125 ml tomato sauce
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 pinch(s) fresh oregano, chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

Mix the flour with the warm water, yeast, and some salt and sugar in a large bowl.
Knead the flour mixture until you get an even mass. If necessary, add a little more water or flour if the dough is too wet or too dry.
Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let it rise in a warm place for 60 minutes.
After the dough has risen, dust your work surface with some flour.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius top/bottom heat. Preheating the oven is necessary here so that the pizza becomes crispy.
Roll out the dough evenly. Place the dough on your baking sheet without any toppings.
Spread the rolled out yeast dough with the tomato sauce.
Drizzle the pizza with olive oil, then sprinkle the chopped garlic and fresh oregano on top.
Bake the pizza in the oven for 10 minutes.

Tip: Every oven and every yeast dough is slightly different. Therefore the baking time can vary. If necessary, leave your pizza in the oven for another 5 to 10 minutes. It’s done when the edges turn a crispy brown color.

Pizza Marinara: Delicious variants

You can also spice up the pizza marinara with other ingredients. A few ideas for this are

Pizza Mediterranean: with zucchini, aubergine, and basil
Pizza Pesto: with fresh herbs and vegan pesto
Pizza Vegetariana: with corn, peppers, zucchini, and other fresh vegetables
Pizza Funghi: with mushrooms and oregano

Tip: Even with vegan pizza, you don’t have to do without cheese. After baking, sprinkle your pizza with a handful of yeast flakes or some vegan cheese.

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Food

Bake a Crispy Pizza: This Trick Makes It Possible

If you want to bake pizza properly, you don’t need a stone oven. But there is a crucial trick how the pizza gets really crispy in the oven at home. We’ll tell you.

Baking pizza properly is an art in itself. A traditional Italian pizza has a crispy base and topped with fresh ingredients. The secret behind this is the preparation in the stone oven: a fire burns under the stone, which heats up its surface considerably. The pizza is then baked crispy brown directly on the hot stone.

But you can also imitate how a stone oven works at home. Most modern ovens have a setting where the pizza gets nice and crispy without burning. We’ll show you a simple trick to make pizza like it’s out of the stone oven.

Choose the right setting

In order to bake pizza properly, you should select the appropriate setting on your oven. So first familiarize yourself with the different oven symbols.

The setting, which mimics the brick oven, is convection with bottom heat. You can recognize this setting by the symbol of a fan with a line or a wave underneath it. This setting is perfect for properly baking pizza. It is baked crispy on the bottom, but only gently cooked on top.

Bake your pizza with this setting in the lower third of the oven at maximum temperature. Depending on the recipe, the pizza is ready in ten to twenty minutes.

If your oven does not have this setting, then alternatively bake the pizza at the maximum temperature on top/bottom heat. Place the pizza at the bottom of the oven. In this way, the heat comes directly to the dough and makes it crispy. The baking time also varies with this variant depending on the recipe.

By the way: This setting is also suitable for heating up pizza. The leftovers will still taste good the next day.

Pizza like from the stone oven: ideas for at home

With the right setting on your oven, you can also make a pizza with a crispy crust at home. It tastes especially good if you make the pizza yourself. Both the pizza dough and the pizza sauce are prepared quickly. Then choose your favorite ingredients and top the pizza with peppers, spinach, olives, cheese or fresh rocket, for example. Get inspired by these pizza recipes:

  • Cauliflower Pizza
  • Spinach pizza
  • Pizza Marinara
  • Arugula Pizza

Tip: Pizza as fast food does not have to be unhealthy. You can also bake a healthy pizza without yeast and white flour. We’ll show you how it’s done here: Fast and healthy pizza? It works with this ingredient.

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Food

Pinsa Romana: This is How the Easily Digestible Pizza Alternative Succeeds

The Pinsa Romana is similar to an ordinary pizza, but is said to be more digestible. We will explain to you what is behind the trend from Italy and how you can prepare Pinsa yourself.

For several years, a trend dish has been spreading from Italy that not only resembles pizza in name: the pinsa. They are also called Pinsa Romana, because the Romans are said to have enjoyed eating the pastry. But the recipe was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the last decade.

What makes the pinsa romana so popular? Above all, it is their dough that is said to be more digestible than pizza dough. It consists of a mixture of wheat, rice and soy or chickpea flour and Italian sourdough (“lievito madre”). The rice flour is supposed to loosen up the dough, the soy flour ensures good binding and proteins and the sourdough is supposed to make the pinsa romana easier to digest.

The long rising time also contributes to this: the dough of the pinsa should rest for up to 72 hours or more. The ongoing fermentation processes not only make the dough very airy, but are also supposed to relieve the digestive tract of some of its work. However, there are still no systematic scientific comparative studies between the digestibility of pinsa and pizza. More about this here: This is why many people can no longer tolerate bread.

In the next sections you will find out how you can bake and topping Pinsa Romana yourself without Lievito Madre.

Pinsa Romana: The recipe for the special dough

For four pins you need:

350 g flour type 405 or 550
50 g wholemeal spelled flour
75 g rice flour
25 g chickpea flour or soy flour
0.5g of fresh yeast or 0.2g of fresh yeast and 50g of Lievito Madre
approx. 300 ml cold water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp olive oil

Directions:

Mix the flours together in a large bowl.
Dissolve the yeast and salt each in a portion of the water.
Add yeast water, salt water, olive oil and, if necessary, Lievito Madre to the flour mixture. Knead the ingredients for about ten minutes until you have a smooth dough. Add some more water if needed.
Cover and let the dough rest for 30 minutes, kneading it briefly every ten minutes.
Place the dough in a large sealable container and refrigerate for 48 to 72 hours.
On baking day, take the dough out of the fridge 2-3 hours before you use it to let it come to room temperature.
Knead the dough briefly and divide it into four pieces of dough. Cover them with a tea towel and let them rise again for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 240 degrees circulating air. Note: For most dishes you can do without preheating the oven and thus save energy. Preheating the pinsa romana (just like pizza or tarte flambée) makes sense, however, because it only needs to be baked for a short time, but it should be nice and crispy. The ovens of professional pizzerias reach much higher temperatures.
Pull the dough pieces apart in an oval or round shape. Be careful to break as few air bubbles as possible. The dough does not have to be as thin as pizza dough.
Place the pins on an oiled baking sheet and top them with ingredients of your choice.
Bake the pins for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Tasty toppings for pinsa romana

You can eat the Pinsa pure or top it like a pizza, for example with:

  • tomato sauce
  • fresh seasonal vegetables
  • cheese or vegan yeast melt
  • fresh herbs
  • aromatic olive oil

The only thing to keep in mind is that the Pinsa Romana is only briefly in the oven, just like a pizza. This means that you should pre-cook vegetables or cut them very thinly. It’s also a good idea not to cover the pinsa too thickly, as that could make them mushy (and harder to eat).

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Cooking Tips

5 General Pizza Cooking Tips

Do you want to make pizza like in a pizzeria? We’ve collected tips to help you!

  1. Use a wooden baking spade or a thin, rimless baking sheet. You can also prepare your pizza on a sheet of aluminum foil or parchment paper on the back of the baking sheet. Then simply discard the pizza foil from this baking tray onto the preheated baking tray.
  2. Sprinkle a spade or baking sheet generously with cornmeal before placing the dough.
  3. Bake the pizza base without topping for 5 minutes. Press down large bubbles on the dough with a wooden spoon, then lay out the filling. You can fry the wet filling ingredients, such as spinach or mushrooms, a little, so that some of the water evaporates. (If using spinach, wring it out in a paper towel.) It is good to sprinkle the base with a thin layer of cheese before adding the sauce or brush the dough with vegetable oil before placing the filling. Place the filling on the crust just before baking. If the filling lies on the raw dough for a long time, it soaks the dough and the crust turns out to be unbaked.
  4. Wrap the base in foil or sprinkle generously with grated cheese. If the bottom of the crust burns, place the pizza on a higher rack in the oven. If the pizza burns on one side, turn it: the oven may not heat up evenly.
  5. Bake the crust without filling for 10-15 minutes, until the dough rises slightly and is browned. Add the filling and continue baking.
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Food

8 Secrets of a Perfect Pizza Dough

Pizza! At the mere mention of this word, profuse salivation begins and in the subsequent time, you will not be abandoned by thoughts of a delicious aromatic pizza with the most tender dough and stretching cheese. There is hardly a person who would say that he does not like this divine delicacy, and if such an eccentric lives on this planet, then he, most likely, tried some kind of wrong pizza. The basis of a delicious pizza is, of course, the dough, which must be cooked correctly for the dish to be truly unforgettable. We have prepared for you the secrets of the perfect pizza dough.

  1. The easiest way is to roll out the dough on baking paper, after sprinkling it with flour. This will save you from unnecessary and completely unnecessary movements since you can send the pizza to the oven right on the parchment.
  2. Pizza tastes differ dramatically from person to person. If you love the fluffy dough, then take on board a simple life hack: let the rolled dough rest for 5-10 minutes. If you are worried that during this time it will have time to wind up, cover it with cling film.
  3. If, on the contrary, you like a thin dough that will crunch in your mouth, then you need to roll it out as much as possible, sparing no effort, and bake at elevated temperatures – 230-250 degrees.
  4. Another secret to the deliciously crispy dough is olive oil. They should grease a baking sheet. Put the dough on top and send it to the oven preheated to 220 degrees for 5 minutes. Only then add the filling.
  5. What if you didn’t roll out the dough on parchment? Do not worry ahead of time. You will need a rolling pin. Wrap it in half of the dough and transfer it while holding the handles.
  6. You can and should experiment with the ingredients for the dough. So, advanced gourmets prepare pizza dough from a mixture of flour and semolina. It turns out to be more crunchy and tender. You can use this mixture not only for making dough but also for dusting a baking sheet.
  7. The tedious part of making pizza is waiting for the dough to rise. Add more yeast to speed up this process. You only need 3/4 teaspoon more than the recipe says.
  8. Italians love aromatic herbs and actively use them in cooking. Take on board a cool life hack: To make the dough tastier and more aromatic, stir in oregano, basil, or other dried seasonings of your choice.
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