Italian Bread

 

 

 

When I first baked bread back in the late '70's, one of my favorites was the “Pane all'Olio” or “Mantovana Bread” from Marcella Hazan's “More Classic Italian Cooking.” Even then, Hazan referred to this bread as one that “used to be common” in Northern Italy. I have no idea how common it is today. Perhaps Giovanni (JoeV on TFL) can tell us.

The Pane all'Olio is a low-hydration bread. In Hazan's recipe, half the flour is in a biga which has the same hydration as the final dough. I had some biga naturale left over from the Sourdough Italian Bread I made yesterday, so I decided to use it to make a sourdough version of Pane all'Olio. I did boost the hydration from 56% to 61%, to suit my taste. The dough is still very much drier than that of most breads I've been baking recently. Otherwise, I maintained Hazan's ingredient proportions.

The procedure for making this bread is unusual in that, after the biga is added and the dough kneaded, it is allowed to ferment until doubled, then divided and shaped and baked, without proofing. It has a long bake in a relatively cool oven, to give it a thick, crunchy crust.

Biga:	Baker's %	Weight
Flour	100	314.76
Water	75	236.07
Salt	0	0
Yeast	0	0
Starter	50	157.38
		708.21

The biga can be made the night before the baking day and fermented for 12 hours at room temperature. It can also be made the day before, fermented for 12 hours and then refrigerated overnight. If refrigerated, you should let it warm up for an hour at room temperature before mixing the dough.

 

Final Dough:	Baker's %	Weight
Flour	100	314.76
Water	47	147.94
Salt	2	12.59
Olive oil	3	18.89
Yeast	0	0
Pre-Ferment	200	550.83
		1045

Note: The original starter is backed out of the biga before mixing with the other Final Dough ingredients.

Note: Recommend reducing the salt to 1.8%.

 

Procedures

1. The day before baking, mix the biga ingredients and ferment.

2. On the day of baking, disperse the biga in the Final Dough water.

3. Add the flour, salt and Olive Oil and mix thoroughly, using the paddle blade on a stand mixer.

4. Mix at Speed 2 until moderate gluten development.

5. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured board and give it a couple stretch and folds.

6. Form the dough into a ball, and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover tightly.

7. Ferment the dough until doubled in volume. About 3 hours.

8. About an hour before baking, pre-heat the oven to 450ºF with a baking stone and your steaming apparatus in place.

9. Transfer the dough back to the board, divide it into two equal pieces and form each into a loaf. Hazan describes the loaf as “a thick, cigar-shaped roll, plump at the middle, slightly tapered at the ends, and about 7 to 8 inches long.”

10. Pre-steam your oven.

11. Transfer the loaves to a peel. Make a single lengthwise slash along the top of each, about an inch deep.

12. Transfer the loaves to the baking stone and steam the oven.

13. Bake for 12 minutes at 450ºF.

14. After 12 minutes, turn the oven down to 375ºF and bake for 45 minutes more, or until the loaves are done.

15. Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack and cool completely (at least two hours) before slicing and serving.

 

 

The loaf had a nice crunchy crust. The crumb was tender. The flavor was “good,” but, besides being a bit salty to my taste, it seemed rather dull and uninteresting compared to the breads I've been making and eating of late. (My wife's comment was, “It's good … but ... not like your other bread.”)

Arrrrgh! My palate is ruined for white bread!

Oh, well. One must always have a back-up. Mine actually came out of the oven before the Pane all'Olio was baked.

 

The Cinnamon-Raisin-Walnut Bread from BBA is always a palate pleaser at our house. (My wife's comment was, “Did you leave some out for breakfast?”)

David

 

 

I'm fighting a nasty cold. I don't have the snowstorm excuse to stay shut in and bake bread, so ... whatever. 

I baked the San Francisco Sourdough from Michel Suas' "Advanced Bread & Pastry" again. Delicious, and not at all aggressively sour.

 

I also made Italian Bread with biga naturale - my sourdough version of Peter Reinhart's "Italian Bread" in BBA, which uses a yeasted biga.

I like this bread a lot (my version, not PR's). The formula has been posted in a previous blog entry, Sourdough Italian Bread and Sandwich Rolls. I'd been meaning to make it with some Durum flour after my last bake, and I finally got around to it. I substituted  25% of the total "Bread Flour" with Durum flour. Good choice.

This bread is similar to Maggie Glazer's Sourdough Challah in that it combines a slightly sweet dough with a mild sourdough tang. I definitely like this combination of flavors.

I mixed the biga last night and let it ferment over-night. I mixed the dough this morning after I got "activated' ... 10:30 am? It was baked, cooled and ready for dinner at 7:30 pm.

My formula for Sunday-morning-with-a-cold activation:

It took two this morning.

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

My Olive Bread....I think this time I got it right in terms of the proofing.  I used the finger test as per the advices by some.  Well,  it was really really useful.  Thank you so much for the video link that shows it.

 

The fluff inside seems quite even,  except that my olives are not evenly spread out......things to improve the next time.  The taste was great...love the olive smell....

 

More details attached:http://sites.google.com/site/jlohcook/home/breadmaking/olive-bread

 

Friday was my first bake of the new year, and I tried my hand a BBA's Italian bread.

 

I mixed the biga Thursday afternoon, before heading of to the South Alabama basketball game (we lost, by 3, in OT), and put into the fridge during halftime in the BCS championship game ("Bama won, if you hadn't heard—Roll, Tide, Roll).

 

Friday morning I took the biga out of the fridge, cut it into 10 pieces, and let it warm up while I had coffee, and read the paper.

 

 

I mixed the flour, yeast, malt, sugar, and salt in the bowl of my KA mixer, immediately after cutting the biga into pieces.

 

 

 

When the biga was about room temp, I completed mixing—adding the biga pieces to the bowl, adding the olive oil, and some of the water. and began mixing on first speed with the paddle, adding more water gradually until the dough came together in a ball. I then switched to the dough hook, and kneaded at 2nd speed for about eight minutes, and put the dough in an oiled plastic bowl with a lid, for a two hour rise. 

I gently removed the dough to the counter and divided it into two more or less equal pieces (one was 19.3 oz., the other 19.6 oz), and shaped each piece into a bâtard.

 

 

 

I put a sheet of parchment on my wooden Super Peel (without the cloth gizmo) and dusted it with cornmeal, and then gently placed the bâtards on the dusted parchment to rise, for about an hour.

 

My oven is not as wonderful as I would like it to be, and it doesn't reach temperature when it claims to reach temp. So, even though I set it for 500°, it finally reached 475° after about 40 minutes. By the time I added water to the pan on the bottom rack for steam, and then slid the bâtards (still on the parchment) onto the stone, the temp had dropped to just over 400°.

I baked the loaves for about 13 minutes, and then turned them, and baked them for about 8 minutes more, tenting with aluminum foil for the last 5 minutes because they were getting darker than I had expected.

 

I took the bâtards out of the oven and placed them on wire racks to cool.

 

 

 

I think I'm getting better at scoring loaves, but I still need more practice. For this I used a single-edged razor blade, and I seem to do better with that then with either of my lames.

If anyone can offer advice on scoring, I will welcome your wisdom.

I used KAF unbleached bread flour, SAF Instant yeast, Morton Coarse Kosher salt, KAF diastatic malt powder, and Carbonnell extra virgin olive oil.

The loaves turned out well, with fairly tight crumb, nice flavor, and a chewy crust.

I've sent this along to Susan for possible inclusion in Yeast Spotting at her great blog, Wild Yeast.

 

Here's the recipe for BBA's Italian Bread.

 

Biga

21⁄2 cups      (11.25 oz.)      unbleached bread flour

1⁄2 tsp.         (.055 oz.)        instant yeast

3⁄4 C + 2 TB

to 1 C           (7 to 8 oz.)      water at room temp.

 

1. Stir together flour and yeast in 4-qt. bowl or bowl of a mixer. Add 3/4 cup plus 2 TB water, and stir or mix at low speed with paddle attachment until everything comes together in a coarse ball. Adjust flour and water as needed so that dough is neither too sticky nor too stiff.

2. Sprinkle some flour on counter and transfer dough to counter. Knead for 4 to 6 minutes (or use dough hook and mix on medium speed for 4 minutes).

3. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. cover bowl with plastic wrap and ferment at room temp for 2 to 4 hours, until dough nearly doubles in size.

4. Remove dough from bowl, knead it lightly to degas, and return it to the bowl, covering the bowl with plastic wrap. Place the bowl in the refrigerator overnight. According to BBA, you can keep this in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or you can freeze it in an airtight plastic bag for up to 3 months.

 

Italian Bread

Makes 2 one-pound loaves or 9 torpedo (hoagie) rolls

 

3 1⁄2 Cups      (18 oz.)      biga (see previous recipe—use the entire recipe

2 1⁄2 Cups      (11.25 oz.) unbleached bread flour

1 2⁄3 tsp.        (.41 oz.)     salt

1 TB               (.5 oz.)     sugar

1 tsp               (.11 oz.)    instant yeast

1 tsp               (.17 oz.)    diastatic barley malt powder (optional)

1 TB               (.5 oz.)     olive oil, vegetable oil or shortening

3⁄4 cup to

3⁄4 cup+2 TB   (7 to 8 oz.) water (or milk, if making rolls) , lukewarm (90° to 100° F)

 

1. Remove biga from refrigerator 1 hour before making dough. Cut biga into about 10 pieces, with a pastry scraper. cover pieces with plastic wrap and let sit for 1 hour to take chill off.

 

2. Stir together the flour, salt, sugar, yeast , and malt powder in a 4-qt. bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the biga pieces, the olive oil, and 3⁄4 cup of water and stir together (or mix on low speed with paddle attachment) until a ball forms, adjusting water or flour as needed. The dough should be slightly sticky and soft.

 

3. Sprinkle flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter and knead (or mix on medium speed with the dough hook) Knead for about 10 minutes (I mixed for about 8 minutes with dough hook at speed tow or three on my KA six-qt. mixer), adding flour as needed. Dough should pass the window pane test, and be tacky but not sticky. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to it, rolling it around to coat all surfaces. cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

 

4. Ferment at room temperature for about 2 hours, or until dough doubles in size.

 

5. Gently divide the dough into two equal pieces of about 18 oz. each, or into 9 pieces of about 4 oz. each for torpedo rolls. Carefully form the dough pieces into bâtards or or rolls, degassing the dough as little as possible.  Lightly dust with a sprinkle of flour, cove with a towel or plastic wrap, and let rest for 5 minutes (a step I neglected). then complete the shaping extending the loaves to about 12 inches or shaping the torpedo rolls. Line a sheet pan with baking parchment (I placed the parchment on a large wooden peel) and dust with semolina flour or cornmeal. Place the loaves on the dusted parchment and lightly mist with spray oil. Cover loaves loosely with plastic wrap.

 

6. Proof at room temp. for about 1 hour or until loaves have grown to about 11⁄2 times their original size.

 

7. Prepare oven for hearth baking. Place baking stone on middle rack, remove racks above that rack. Place pan for water for steam on bottom rack or floor of the oven. Preheat the oven to 500°F. Score the breads with 2 parallel diagonal slashes or one long slash.

 

8. Rolls can be baked directly on the sheet pan. For loaves, generously dust a peel or back of a sheet pan with semolina flour or cornmeal and very gently transfer the loaves to the peel or pan. Transfer the loaves to the stone (or bake on the sheet pan). Pour one cup of hot water into the steam pan and close the door. Lower oven temp. to 450°F and bake for about 20 minutes, or lower temp to 400°F and bake a bit longer. rotate loaves 180° if necessary for even baking. Rolls should bake for about 15 minutes.

Note: BBA suggests spraying the walls of the oven twice at 30 second intervals and then lowering the temp. to 450°, but I don't do this because I've fond that so much opening and closing the oven door causes too great a loss of heat at a time when I want maximum heat.

 

9. Transfer loaves or rolls to a cooling rack for at least 1 hour before slicing and serving.

 

I think it's now time to slice and taste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I titled this post Bake Home as sort of a portmanteau of back and bake, as I am back home from Alaska and this is the first chance I've had to bake! My girlfriend and I had a little tradition going, I'd head down to her house and make bread on sunday to share with her and her sister's dog. Well, she's gone up in Alaska now, but I headed down to bake (and make sure her/her sister's dog got some bread too).

Today was a triple threat from Bread Baker's Apprentice, Italian Bread 2 ways (commercial yeast and sourdough) and Portuguese Sweet Bread.

I spaced out a bit when I was making the commercial yeast Italian Bread and added an extra cup of water (the recipe calls for 3/4 cup to 3/4 + 6 tablespoons... OOOPS). I didn't realize this until much later, so I added more flour in while mixing it, but I didn't want to add too much because I'd be WAY off the recipe (oh if I only knew...). So I tried to give it a number of folds hoping that'd make it pull together, it did a bit but it was still a very wet dough. I proofed the loaves using parchment as a couche (as well as a new brotform I got for my birthday!). Turned out I didn't flour the parchment quite enough so when I turned them over onto another parchment on the peel... they stuck. Was no big deal, I was able to pull it off without too much trouble, but it was becoming really obvious the hydration on the dough was higher than it should've been.

I tried with a bit of success to slash the loaves, and went to put them in the oven. This is when bad thing #2 struck, one of the two loaves had oozed a bit off the parchment onto the peel, and while a portion of it left the peel... not all of it did. Unfortunately, enough was left on the peel that I couldn't just pull the peel out, it would've pulled the whole loaf out. So I hurriedly scraped the dough off the peel (getting a little burn on my arm in the process), and found myself looking at some sort of strange mutant loaf. The loaf in the brotform was far less exciting, although it did take a bit longer to release than normal. I was surprised for all the horrible abuse in trying to seperate the parchment paper, get them slashed, and get them in the oven; these loaves came out with a fairly nice crumb!

 

The sourdough version of the Italian bread had no excitement, made a sourdough biga the night beforehand, made the dough today, fermented, shaped, fermented, baked ta da. No burns, no spacing out on recipe quantities. I used my other new brotform for one of these loaves. I need to experiment with that one for a really nifty way to slash it.

And finally, Portuguese Sweet Bread, again relatively uneventful. I needed sandwich bread for lunch at work so I decided to make them as sandwich loaves rathern than in a pie tin as in the recipe. These two loaves made the house smell just wonderful as they were baking.

And my assistant in all of this (be nice to him, he got an unintentional shaving (big misunderstanding with the groomer)

(crumb photos for the sourdough will be coming later when I cut into it!)

The rolls I made with the Sourdough Italian Bread  dough were so good, I made a bigger batch today. I thought about making them larger than last time, but my wife said she wanted hers smaller. So, I made half of them 4 oz and half 3 oz. I guess you could call them "His and Hers Sourdough Italian Rolls."

 

One of our favorite breads is the Cinnamon-Raisin-Walnut Bread from Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." I don't know why I don't bake it more often. Just "so many breads, so little time," I guess. Anyway, my wife has been lobbying for me to make it for a few weeks. So ...

 

David

 

This bread is based on the Italian Bread formula in Peter Reinhart's “Bread Baker's Apprentice.” I substituted a biga naturale (sourdough starter) for the biga made with instant yeast in Reinhart's formula. I still added the instant yeast to the final dough to provide more predictable fermentation and proofing times.

Reinhart recommends this formula for hoagie rolls. I divided the dough to make 4 rolls scaled to 4 ounces each and shaped the remainder of the dough into one large bâtard.

I also employed the “stretch and knead in the bowl” technique during bulk fermentation, even though I used a KitchenAid mixer for mixing beforehand.

 

Intermediate starter (Biga naturale)

Active starter	3 oz.
Water	9 oz.
KAF Bread flour	12 oz.

 

Final Dough

Biga naturale (Note: save the remaining 6 oz. for another bread.)	18 oz.
KAF Bread flour	11.25 oz.
Salt	0.41 oz. (1-2/3 tsp)
Sugar	0.5 oz. (1 T)
Instant yeast	0.11 oz (1 tsp)
Diastatic barley malt powder	0.17 oz. (1 tsp)
Olive oil	0.5 oz (1 T)
Water at 80F	7 oz (¾ cup)
Sesame seeds for coating. Semolina to dust the parchment paper.

 

Mix and ferment the biga.

Mix the biga naturale the evening before baking. Dissolve the starter in the water in a medium sized bowl, then add the flour and mix thoroughly to hydrate the flour and distribute the starter. Cover the bowl tightly and allow to ferment for 3-6 hours, until it doubles in volume. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the biga from the refrigerator and allow it to warm up for an hour or so. Alternately, mix the biga late at night and ferment at room temperature overnight.

 

Mix the dough

Mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast and malt powder in a large bowl or the bowl of your mixer. Add the biga in pieces, olive oil and ¾ cups of tepid water and mix thoroughly. Adjust the dough consistency by adding small amounts of water or flour as necessary. The dough should be very slack at this point.

I mixed the dough with the dough hook in the KA mixer for 10 minutes then transferred it to an 8 cup/2 liter glass pitcher that had been lightly oiled.

 

Fermentation

I stretched and folded the dough in the pitcher with a rubber spatula then covered it tightly. I repeated the stretch and fold again 20 and 40 minutes later. I then left the dough to ferment until it was double the original volume (45-60 minutes more).

 

Divide and form

Divide into 2 pieces and pre-form as logs. Allow the dough to rest 5 minutes or more, then form into bâtards. To make rolls, divide into 4 ounce pieces and pre-shape into rounds, then shape into torpedos. If desired, spray or brush the loaves with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Prepare a couche – either a floured piece of baker's linen or parchment paper sprinkled with semolina.

Pre-heat the oven to 500F with a baking stone on the middle shelf. Make preparations for steaming the oven.

Place the loaves in the couche, cover with plastic or a towel and allow to proof until 1-1/2 times their original size (about 40 minutes).

 

Baking

Score the loaves and transfer them to the baking stone. Bake with steam, using your favorite method. After loading the loaves and steaming, turn the over down to 450F and bake until done (about 20 minutes for a bâtard, 15 mnutes for rolls.). If you want a thicker crust, use a lower temperature and bake for longer.

 

Cooling

Allow to cool before slicing, if you can.

Sourdough Italian Roll

Sourdough Italian Roll crumb

We had a couple of the rolls for lunch. They were very nice. The crust is chewy, not crunchy, and the crumb is also chewy. This is not your fluffy, cottony roll that seems standard in most sub shops and, unfortunately, most Italian delis.

I am pretty sure this is the roll I would choose for a meatball sandwich, oozing mozzarella and dripping marinara sauce. I don't think this roll would be the usual soggy mess after the first 20 seconds. However, in the interest of Science, I will volunteer to test this hypothesis. Of course, if additional volunteers were to pool their data with mine, we can be more confident of our conclusions.

David

Submitted to Yeast Spotting on Susan FNP's marvelous Wild Yeast blog