Pane Siciliano

001-Pane_Siciliano-headerOur second Italian bread in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Pane Siciliano is recipe #23 in the BBA Challenge. New in the process is the use of semolina flour, a flour made of durum wheat which is often used in making pasta. It is a slightly gritty flour and has that distinct yellow cast to it you can see in your standard spaghetti and which adds not just colour but extra aroma and flavour, says Mr Reinhart. This is an enriched bread, having the addition of a little olive oil and honey.

I’m looking forward to the final product to see how this works out.

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Pane Italiano: Molto Delizioso

ItalIntroHere we are with Italian Bread, recipe #15 in [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] Challenge. (And no, I won’t butcher the Italian language for this one any more than I just did.)

This recipe was pretty much a repeat of the French bread I made two weeks back so the steps along the way are nearly identical. The most obvious difference is the shape – the French bread was a baguette and this is a batard. There’s also sugar, malt and oil in the ingredient list where the French bread was strictly flour, salt yeast and water. The process itself, otherwise, was pretty much the same so as easy as the French bread was, so is this.

Let’s have a look at that.

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Mambo Italiano

Today’s bake was, again, from [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link]. As I had about 9 ounces leftover of the biga used in the Potato Rosemary bread, I decided to use it up for another loaf before it’s three days expiry ran out. Looking through the BBA, I saw a recipe that I could use it up with and decided on Italian Bread. I also saw that it was one of the doughs you could use for Grissini, Cool, two breads in one shot! So I made up a batch.

Once more, this was strictly following the recipe being my first time through. Made up the dough which was enough for two loaves, however, I made only one into a batard shape and the rest I rolled out and cut into breadsticks. By now, you’re probably pretty familiar with what a normal bread dough looks like so I’ll spare you that bit, but here’s the breadsticks, waiting for the loaf to come out of the oven so they could go in for a bake.

grissini proofing

I simply took the dough and rolled it out to a size about as wide as the pan, then using a pizza wheel, cut small strips about 2cm wide. I rolled them up a little so they wouldn’t look like small planks, spread them on the sheet and sprinkled a mix of coarse black pepper, paprika and a little garlic powder on half, sesame seed on the other then a little coarse salt over the lot. Continue reading “Mambo Italiano”