Suppli Buns

Pass The Plate + Masterchef + Experimentation...

I have wanted to try making these for aaaages...
Jamie Oliver's pizza dough recipe has been used innumerable times in my family- not only for pizza, but for calzones and little ciabatta-like buns too.
Ever since making those buns, I've had the idea of filling each one with a bit of chocolate, nutella, peanut butter or cheese and then baking them, creating a warm, gooey treat.
A recent episode of Masterchef Australia solved one of my problems: what to call them.
Little boules of bread filled with something?

Suppli is a dish from Rome consisting of a ball of risotto coated in egg and bread crumbs and deep fried. The 'surprise' inside is that the risotto is surrounding a hunk of mozzarella.
Is that tempting or is that tempting?
One team made a twist on suppli: pork meatballs with a fig filling. 
So why not try my own suppli?

This wasn't as successful as I had hoped. The cheese wan't stringy and gooey when I took the buns out. Once, when we made regular buns using this dough, I sliced and put some cheese in one and baked it and the cheese came out how I wanted. The difference there was that the bun was already baked, so I only had to bake it long enough for the cheese to melt. This time the whole dough had to cook, so the cheese was in for too long. 
The nutella and peanut butter ones came out nice and gooey, although I wanted more of an explosion of flavour and filling. When I was filling them, I had to put very little because otherwise they started to ooze out as I rolled them. I think making bigger buns would enable me to put more filling in.
They were still fun to eat and they were a success with Pass The Plate too.
So give it a go! Try other fillings: chocolate, meat, different cheeses, savoury fillings like spinach, corn or mushrooms. Share them and enjoy :)
(But don't do what they did on Masterchef and reveal the surprise... that's just lame...)

Pizza Dough
From Jamie's Italy, by Jamie Oliver

Note: I went with my dad's instructions- he uses one of Jamie Oliver's old recipes.
Make sure you seal the balls well, because some of mine started to open up while baking. Maybe placing all the seams facing the stone would help.

16 oz all purpose flour
4 oz really good semolina flour (the quality of the semolina makes a huge difference in the dough)
A pinch of salt
Water
About 7g dry yeast or 1 1/2 cm cube fresh yeast mixed in a mug of warm water with a small spoonful of sugar and left to stand for about 15 minutes

Preheat the oven to 270 C (If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven)
Mix in your flours, salt and yeast and gradually add water as you knead it until you get an elastic, smooth ball of dough. Knead (gently tossing, pulling and pressing- not pushing or squashing anymore) for 10 minutes. 
Place it in a bowl, poke some holes in with a knife and cover tightly with clingfilm.
Let it rise (about 20-30 minutes).
Remove the dough and knead it a little to knock the air out. Punch some holes with a knife, place it in the bowl, replace the clingfilm and let it rise again.

Divide your dough into lumps, however big you want the buns. If you're using a pizza stone, place your assembled supplis on a regular tray for now.
Flatten each lump, fill it with your filling and gently fold it closed. Roll it around in your hands to form a ball.
When you're finished, transfer the balls to your baking stone or place this tray in the oven if you're not using a stone.
Let them bake until they turn a little brown, and eat warm!