briciole

pane alla zucca

pumpkin bread

The cart in the foreground contains the result of our visit to the Warren Creek Farms pumpkin patch last October. Besides three pumpkins for carving, we chose several other specimens, like the Cinderella pumpkin indicated by the arrow. Since it is partially hidden, I have drawn two arrows to indicate two others that were on display. The original name of this variety of pumpkin is Rouge vif D'Etampes, but Cinderella pumpkin (literally, zucca di Cenerentola) fits it perfectly.

The pumpkin was so pretty, I could not bring myself to cook it. I have a cold room that is perfect for storing squashes, but even there they don't last forever, so one day recently, I decided it was time to bake the Cinderella. I pierced it in several places with a blade and put it in the oven preheated to 375 F for about half an hour to slightly soften it. When the pumpkin had cooled a bit, I cut it in half and scooped out the seeds (a grapefruit spoon is perfect for this task). I did not discard what I had removed from inside the pumpkin (see below).

I put the two pumpkin halves back in the oven, cut side down, until I could easily pierce the flesh with a blade. I took out of the oven the baking sheet and let the pumpkin cool. I discarded the water that was released by the cooling pumpkin. I then scooped out the flesh (again using the grapefruit spoon) and put it in a colander set over a bowl. By the time I was finished with the two big pieces of cooked pumpkin, a bit more water had been released and I discarded that as well. On this page, you can see some photos of the process I somewhat followed. Note the color of the roasted pumpkin in the photos: it resembles that of oranges, and it is lighter that that of canned pumpkin. This has an impact on the color of the bread (more on this at the end of the post).

At this point, knowing that I would use the pumpkin to make bread and also ice cream, I put it in a bowk and processed it briefly with an immersion blender. I immediately froze more than half of the purée and refrigerated the rest until ready to use it. I also rinsed the seeds I had removed from inside the pumpkin and roasted them at 375 F until they were crisp. The seeds (semi di zucca) were larger than those of the pumpkins my husband had carved for Halloween and very tasty. In the part of Italy where I grew up, roasted and salted pumkpin seeds are called bruscolini.

As I write, I have already made this pumpkin bread several times. The photo above shows it accompanying some roasted applesauce. It goes really well with cheese and it is a pleasure to nibble a slice au naturel. The recipe for the bread comes from the King Arthur Flour website. I always halve the quantities to make one braid. Originally, I was worried that the spices (spezie) would be a bit too intense, but that is not the case. I weigh the flours and some of the other ingredients, so my list is as follows:

• 5 3/4 ounces (165 g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (this is not an advertisement: I always use this flour to make bread)
• 4 1/4 ounces (120 g) whole-wheat flour from my grain CSA
• 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) cinnamon (cannella)
• 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) ground ginger (zenzero in polvere)
• 1/8 teaspoon (0.625 ml) ground cloves (chiodi di garofano in polvere)
• 3/4 ounce (20 g) diced uncrystallized candied ginger (zenzero candito; see the Note below)
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon instant yeast
• 7.5 ounces (210-215 g) puréed roasted pumpkin
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons (1 ounce / 30 g) melted butter

The original recipe calls also for 1 1/4 ounce (35 g) brown sugar. A few times I used 1/2 ounce (15 g) of honey (miele), but the last time I made the bread, I skipped the sweetener altogether and I liked the result better.

Note: according to this page, the difference between crystallized and uncrystallized ginger is only that the former is rolled in granulated sugar after being candied and the latter is not. I don't like the coating, so I prefer uncrystallized ginger.

Making the bread following the instructions on the KAF recipe page is pretty straightforward. The only thing I did differently is the use of convection baking. Since my oven adjusts the temperature automatically when selecting the convection baking option, I still set it to 350 F. And in my oven, the bread bakes in 25 minutes.

The photos I had of previous realizations of this bread, apart from the one with the applesauce, were not satisfactory. The photo above shows the unsweetened pumpkin bread I baked yesterday, together with some candied ginger: it was made with another one of the pumpkins in the cart at the top, the oblong green one to the left of the Cinderella. Unfortunately, I failed to ask the name of the variety. The color of the roasted flesh is lighter and more yellow, which explains the different color of the bread. When you make your own, consider that the color of the pumpkin will have an effect on the color of the bread.

I am submitting this recipe, bookmarked on the King Arthur Flour website to the December edition of Bookmarked Recipes, an event originally started by Ruth of Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments and now hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

I think this bread makes a great breakfast option, topped with preserves or cheese or used to make French toast, so I am submitting the post to the December edition of Breakfast Club: an event started by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours. Guest-host Krithi of Krithi's Kitchen has chosen Bread as the theme for the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

pane alla zucca

or launch the pane alla zucca audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

bread, pumpkin

bialy per la giornata mondiale del pane

bialys for World Bread Day 2011

I have been baking bread at home for a few years now, but I have missed World Bread Day because the event sort of sneaked up on me finding me unprepared. This year, I made a point of being prepared, so I have a nice bread to share: Boiceville Bialys from "Simply Great Breads" by Daniel Leader with Lauren Chattman. My dictionary defines bialy as "A flat bread roll topped with chopped onions." (Note that the recipe directs you to use a stand-up mixer. However, the dough can be mixed and kneaded by hand, which is what I did.)

I have also another book by Leader: "Local Breads," and I have featured recipes from it here, here and here. The recipe for bialys caught my attention immediately upon going through the book. I have made it twice, halving the quantities and also using my own poppy seeds (semi di papavero) for the filling: I like the combination with onion (cipolla). If you end up having leftover filling, you can use it as topping for a soup, like I did here.

A few weeks ago, I published a photo of my poppy seeds and I mentioned I had used them in a bread recipe: well, here it is and here is a photo of one of my poppies.

The photo above of the baked bialys is not great, but please believe me, they are great. The description Leader gives is perfect: "The bialys come out light and bubbly, with a thin but wonderfully crisp crust."

The parting shot is of the filled bialys ready to go into the oven. "Bialys are best eaten on the day they are baked," says Leader. Indeed, it is difficult to make them last until dinner time (ora di cena).

Happy World Bread Day!

This is my contribution to World Bread Day 2011, an event organized by Zorra of Kochtopf. The event takes place today only.

This post contains the section of the roundup that includes my entry, while this post contains pointers to all the sections of the roundup.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

bialy per la giornata mondiale del pane

or launch the bialy per la giornata mondiale del pane audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

bread, onion

pane di segale ai fiori di timo e di erba cipollina

rye bread with thyme flowers and chive blossoms

For the current edition of Cook the Books, we are reading Sarah Addison Allen’s novel Garden Spells. Not unlike a book I discusseda few months ago (Blessed Are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch), Garden Spells is a fairy tale, and like all good fairy tales, it is a satisfying reading.

My favorite character of the novel is the good fairy, a.k.a. Evanelle. She accepts herself the way she is and also accepts other people the way they are, without trying to change their attitudes, actions or beliefs. What she does is giving them "things they may need" and she does so in the open. There is no hidden meaning in her actions, because she has no idea what specific need the "thing" will answer.

From the garden of the title, Claire, one of the two sisters who are the protagonists of the novel, gets herbs and flowers. She uses them in the preparation of dishes for her catering business and of drinks and preserves. Some of this products are meant to influence the eater/drinker. In this, then, Claire is different from Evanelle.

I am not a gardener, but I have a small space where I conduct experiments with varying degrees of success. Small and irregularly tended as it is, my garden is always a place of magic, though not of spells.

I have a set of foxglow plants (digitale) that are taller than the house^₁, a dark pink sweet pea (pisello odoroso) that is blooming with enthusiasm, sprouting radishes and red Russian kale, leaf lettuce, various members of the allium family, red and purple poppies (papaveri), a number of other culinary herbs (erbe aromatiche)

and chocolate sunflowers (girasoli)

I have never really used flowers in my dishes and reading Garden Spells made me want to perform a small-scale test. As I mentioned in my most recent post, I am trying to become better at using rye flour (farina di segale), which I get as part of my share in a grain CSA. My first rye bread adventure, a few months ago, did not go well, but as I was perusing a recent King Arthur Flour catalog, a recipe caught my attention: Canapé Pumpernickel Bread. I halved the quantities and shaped the dough into a 13-inch baton. I really liked the result: the flavor is complex, the texture rich with whole grains but still smooth.

I thought that this rye bread would lend itself to be enriched with flowers, so I harvested and added the following to the dough: the flowers of three sprigs of my lemon thyme, two chive blossoms and a few flowers of winter savory (santoreggia).

Chive Blossom — ensures you will win an argument. Conveniently, also an antidote for hurt feelings.

flowering lemon thyme

I don't know if thyme flowers have any special power (the Waverley Kitchen Journal at the end of the novel does not include an entry for thyme), but I am officially in love with the bread I made. The flavor of thyme is there and a light hint of onion. I think that next time I will be a bit more daring and increase the quantities.

This is the list of ingredients I used to make the bread. I am reporting the "volume" version, but I actually looked at the "weight" version, converted ounces to grams, then halved the quantities and weighed the ingredients accordingly.

• 3/4 cup [80 g] whole-grain rye flour (see my previous post)
• 3/4 cup [90 g] all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur all-purpose flour)
• 1/2 cup [55 g] whole-wheat flour (I get this also as part oof my CSA grain share)
• 1/2 cup [30 g] large flakes of rye bran that I sift off the stone-ground flour (see my previous post) [note that this is not the same as rye chops, but my approximation using an ingredient I have at hand]
  
• 1 tablespoon [14 g] gluten flour
• 1 teaspoons instant yeast
• 3/4 teaspoons sea salt
• 3/4 cup [175 ml] lukewarm water
• 1 1/2 [45 ml] tablespoons olive oil
• flowers from three springs of lemon thyme, two chive blossoms (florets separated) and a few flowers of winter savory

I followed the instructions as stated in the original recipe, except that I made one baton and let it rise on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I heated the oven to 375 F with an empty baking sheet inside and when the bread was ready to be baked, I sprinkled its surface with a bit of water, moved it with the parchment paper on the hot baking sheet and put it in the oven.

Slices of this rye bread are great served with spreads (like my roasted pepper and almond dip in the top photo) and cheese.

Back to Garden Spells, towards the end of the novel, there is a sentence that I really liked and I hope I won't forget:

When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.

I think the same can be said about sadness. I spent a fair amount of time in my garden during the weekend, trying to focus on small tasks, as a reaction to the pouring over of sadness caused by reading news and watching images coming from Norway. As I mentioned in a previous post, I love Norway, I think that nature-wise it is the most beautiful country in Europe. Many times during my two visits, I felt like I was in a magical kingdom. It is difficult to grasp the reality of such an enchanted place being visited by unspeakable horror. I hope what happened will not change Norway. The country and its people are special and they will always have a special place in my heart.

¹ As Lori Lynn mentions in her comment, foxglove is poisonous. It is very common around here and reseeds itself. I keep it for two reasons: it's a beautiful plant and deer don't like it.

This is my contribution to the current edition of Cook the Books, hosted by Rachel of The Crispy Cook. You can find the guidelines for participating in the event here, and here is the announcement.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

I am also contributing this post to the July edition of Healing Foods, the event created and organized by Siri of Cooking with Siri and hosted this month by Simona of briciole (that would be me). I chose the theme of the month to be whole grains and whole-grain flours.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

pane di segale ai fiori di timo e di erba cipollina

or launch the pane di segale ai fiori di timo e di erba cipollina audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

rye flour, bread, thyme, chives

un weekend di pane

a weekend of bread

A few months ago, I wrote a post about arte bianca, i.e., the art of making bread (literally, white art). I am passionate about making bread (fare il pane), just as I am passionate about making cheese (fare il formaggio). This past weekend, I attended a workshop at the San Francisco Baking Institute, a wonderland (paese delle meraviglie) for bread and pastry makers. It was a birthday gift that I gave to myself. The Institute holds professional courses in bread and pastry making. This year, they have offered weekend-long classes that are perfect for baking enthusiasts for whom a week-long commitment is practically difficult. The workshop I attended last weekend was called "Specialty Breads at Home."

The first photo shows six of the seven breads we made during the weekend. The beautiful loaves are the instructor's production displayed for the end-of-class photo-op. From the left: ciabatta, 100% whole-grain, miche, Finnish rye, pear buckwheat, 100% whole-wheat pan. We also made challah.

This is a sample of my own production: miche (in the back), 100% whole-grain (left), pear buckwheat, and Finnish rye (in the foreground). For some reason, I have problems flouring the loaves before baking, which explains the difference between the surface of my breads and those of the instructor. Besides regular flour, we used whole-wheat, pumpernickel, rye (farina di segale) and buckwheat flour (farina di grano saraceno). We also used flaxseed, sunflower and sesame seeds, wheat germ (germe di grano) cracked wheat, rolled oats and dried pears. Five of the breads were hand-mixed, so I will soon try to make them in my kitchen (I don't have a stand-up mixer and I don't plan to get one, even though that means giving up on the idea of making panettone at home).

The main differences between making bread at the Baking Institute and at home are: the oven (forno) and the amount of dough. The bread we made during class was baked in bakery-size ovens. However, there was also a home oven and the instructor used it to demonstrate techniques to approximate at home conditions typical of bakery ovens.

Have you ever handled 10 kg (22 lbs) of bread dough? That's me moving that quantity from the table to the tub in the foreground during my first workshop at the Institute ("Sourdough Bread at Home") in early March (thanks to Orso for the photo). I like mixing bread dough, seeing it come together under my eyes thanks to the action of my hands — so much so that looking at a mixer in action makes me quite impatient.

At the end of each day, we tasted the breads we had baked. The schedule was such that we tasted ciabatta and challah on Saturday and the other five breads on Sunday, a real feast of flavors and textures. I brought home all the bread I made, so, as you can imagine, there is a good amount of bread in our freezer right now.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words and expressions mentioned in the post:

un weekend di pane

or launch the un weekend buono come il pane audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

arte bianca

the art of making bread (literally, white art)

I am not an artist (artista) in any art, let alone making bread (fare il pane), just passionate about it. And I like the Italian expression: it recognizes the special talent of all the people who give us good bread. Buono come il pane (as good as bread), we say in Italian, instead of "as good as gold."

Here are a few images from my most recent home productions (versus recent productions made elsewhere: a story I will tell in a future post). All recipes are in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day.

onion and forbidden (black) rice bread (wild rice in the original)

---

many-seed bread, with flax, sesame and sunflower seeds and rolled oats (pumpkin seeds in the original)

---

5-braid challah

Would you like a slice?

Hear me pronounce the words on the arte bianca audio file [mp3] or go to the arte bianca audio page for more listening options.

erba cipollina

chives (Allium schoenoprasum)

I like to make experiments in my little herb and vegetable garden (orto). I do not call myself a gardener, and manage not to get too disappointed when things don't happen according to expectations. On the other hand, I get very excited when things go well: I feel like I receive a gift I do not deserve.

Last year, I had a small bed built along one side of the house, and in it I planted, among other things, chives. The plant did well (I guess it liked its environment) and I harvested leaves from it for several months. It was a pleasant surprise when, a few days ago, I realized that I could start harvesting again. On this page you can read a few words of advice on growing perennial chives.

I decided to celebrate the event by using chives in a bread recipe from Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart: Soft Cheese Bread, even though I knew I did not have as much as was called for in the ingredient list. I halved the quantities to get one loaf. I more than halved the sweetener using only a tablespoon of agave nectar. Among the options offered, I chose to use potato water and water as liquids, and olive oil as vegetable oil. I substituted some of the bread flour with white whole wheat flour and added extra water as instructed in the recipe. Finally, I opted for cubed cheese (formaggio) and kneaded it into the dough after the overnight rise. I prepared the dough an evening that I was very tired and did a couple of things not exactly as specified in the recipe. The following day, my schedule was hectic, but I managed to bake the bread and it was a life-savior on a day in which we had a lot going on and no time to sit down to a proper meal (pasto).

Not only did the chives come from my little herb garden, but the cheese came from my home production: Monterey Jack, aged for four months. The cheese worked very well in the bread. As the recipe anticipated, the small cubes of cheese become "little cheese bursts" once the bread is baked. I am planning to make cheese bread again, trying the other recipe in the book, Crusty Cheese Bread, this time making sure I have the required quantity of chives.

This is my contribution to edition #223 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now administered by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once and hosted this week by Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook.

Here is the roundup.

Hear me pronounce the words on the erba cipollina audio file [mp3] or go to the erba cipollina audio page for more listening options.

pane pita e hummus

The 2010 February Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

A mezze plate (also called meze) can contain many different foods. The mandatory part of the challenge included pita bread and hummus, and that is what I made. You can find the recipes for all the elements of the challenge here. [As an aside, the word mezze in Italian means half (adjective, female plural). For example, mezze penne is a kind of pasta, a shorter version of penne (literally, half penne).]

One of the reasons I love being a Daring Baker & Daring Cook is that it often happens that the challenge is a recipe I have been meaning to make for some time. Procrastination comes to a halt in the name of the monthly challenge. This month it was pita bread's turn to move from the "to-do" list over to the "done" list.

Michele allowed us to use a mix of flours, so I made pita bread with some whole-wheat flour (about 1/4 of the total), besides regular wheat flour. I halved the recipe, starting with 295 g of water (1 ad 1/4 cups) and 300 g of flour, then adding more flour until the dough had the right consistency. I baked the flatbreads on my baking stone and some puffed up nicely, while others didn't, not sure why. The breads that did not puff up were nonetheless good.

I had not made hummus for a while, so I was happy to renew my acquaintance with this famous spread. I soaked and cooked half a cup of chickpeas (ceci), using the recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. The flavorful cooking liquid left behind after I drained the chickpeas ended up in a really nice pumpkin soup I made the day after.

I roasted a red bell pepper (peperone rosso), removed the skin and added it to the chickpeas. I also roasted four cloves of garlic (quattro spicchi d'aglio), because I prefer the more delicate flavor of roasted garlic to that of raw garlic and squeezed some fresh lemon juice. I also used some ground cumin (cumino) as flavoring (together with  sea salt and freshly ground black pepper). I toast cumin seeds in a dry skillet until fragrant, then grind them in my mortar to get a nice, fresh flavor. Finally, I used olive oil instead of tahini, because the couple of times I have bought tahini in the past I ended up having to discard it, which made me feel bad. I don't use tahini in other dishes and don't make hummus often enough to finish a jar. However, my hummus had a sesame component: I toasted some sesame seeds (semi di sesamo) and sprinkled them on the surface.

Although I did not have a traditional mezze plate, I served my pita bread and hummus together with my roasted red beet spread, my homemade cream cheese and small pieces of two of my hard cheeses (edam and kefalotyri, the latter made with a mix of cow and goat milk). I also served small patties made with thyme-flavored chenna and baked crab cakes (made with fresh crab — more on this in an upcoming post, hopefully).

Preparing pita bread made me think of a traditional Sardinian flatbread that I ate many years ago when I visited the island and never forgot: pane carasau. In browsing around the web trying to find a nice reference to share with you, I found a few videos, the first featuring Anthony Bourdain.

Did you see how the bread puff up beautifully in the oven? The video shows how each flatbread is cut in half horizontally while still warm, but it doesn't show the second baking, when all the pieces are put back in the oven to crisp up. I have eaten pane carasau with pecorino ("true pecorino"), as shown in the video. I have also watched another short video, and also a longer one, divided into two parts (one and two). The latter is in Italian, but I think the images speak by themselves. In it, you can see how the pane carasau is baked the second time, and also the sort of presses used to keep it flat.

Now that I've made pita bread, maybe I will try my hand at pane carasau, though I don't have a wood-fired brick oven. I will start by looking for a recipe and then we'll see what happens. (To be continued.)

In the meantime, you will find a lot of photographs to admire, when you browse the creations of my fellow Daring Cooks. A special thank to Michele for a very nice challenge.

Hear me pronounce the words on the pane pita e hummus audio file [mp3] or go to the pane pita e hummus audio page for more listening options.

Novel Food #8: quattro tipi di pane

four kinds of bread

He realized that, despite his fatigue, which was aggravated by the phone call, he felt hungry as a wolf. It was ten past six, not yet dinnertime. But who ever said you have to eat at an appointed time of day? He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Adelina had prepared a dish fit for a convalescent: boiled cod. On the other hand, they were huge, extremely fresh, and six in number. He didn't bother to reheat them; he liked them cold, dressed with olive oil, a few drops of lemon, and salt. Adelina had bought the bread that morning: a round scanata loaf covered with giuggiulena, those delicious sesame seeds you are supposed to eat one by one as they fall onto the tablecloth, picking them up with your forefinger moistened by saliva. He set the table on the veranda and had himself a feast, savoring each bite as though it were his last.

As you may have guessed, "he" is Inspector Montalbano, the protagonist of novels and stories written by Italian author Andrea Camilleri. I had read Il giro di boa (Rounding the Mark), the novel from which the excerpt above is taken, shortly after it was published, in 2003, and recently I read it again. I lingered over this passage for several reasons. The first one is that it reminded me of my first visit to Sicily, many years ago now. I tasted bread covered with sesame seeds for the first time and loved it. Then, there is the great choice made by the novel's translator, Stephen Sartarelli, of leaving some of the original Sicilian words, especially giuggiulena, which sounds just lovely. I have read that the word comes from the Arab giulgiulan, meaning sesame seed. Sesame seeds (semi di sesamo in Italian) are used in two other delicious Sicilian specialties: reginelle and cubbaita. Finally, there is the philosophy behind Montalbano's approach to eating: savoring each bite as though it were his last. Words to live by.

Montalbano does not cook and does not ask Adelina (his housekeeper) to prepare for him a specific dish. He is happy with whatever he finds in the fridge or in the oven, and when he decides to eat, he devotes to the meal his full, undivided and loving attention: he sets the table, sits down to eat and savors each bite "as though it were his last." Eating on the run is a concept that does not have any place in Montalbano's world. As I wrote in my very first post on this subject, sometimes Montalbano supplements the food prepared by Adelina "with aulive, passuluna and a piece of caciocavallo (green and black olives and a typical southern Italian dream of a cheese)."

The peaceful image of food savored to the last sesame seed picked up from the tablecloth is in sharp contrast with the horrible crimes that are the subject of Montalbano's investigation in the novel, which contains references to current political problems and events. I won't give you more details, otherwise I may spoil your pleasure. Because you are going to read the book, aren't you?

Reading the excerpt and remembering the bread I ate while in Sicily inspired me to make bread with giuggiulena (sesame seeds). Also, Montalbano's love for olives (olive) suggested to me that he may like them in his bread. The end result is a set of four breads and references to their recipe.

Looking for a recipe for bread with sesame seeds, I found two on the King Arthur Flour's web site. The first one (called lunetta) uses mostly semolina flour (which comes from durum wheat). I suggest that you follow this recipe by weighing the ingredients, not measuring their volume (you can view the ingredients by weight on the recipe page). Also, make sure you get fine-textured semolina flour. To be on the safe side, I put the flour in the food processor and run it for a while before mixing it with water, then let the mixture rest for 15 minutes before proceeding with the rest of the preparation. Based on one of the comments on the recipe page, I used a whole egg to make the wash and baked the bread on a pizza stone (for longer than stated). Below there is a photo of the bread sliced¹.

The second recipe has less semolina flour and more white flour (I happen to have Italian-style flour, which I use in a recipe for pizza dough). The braid shape is not very evident in the photo. I chose this recipe, because I seem to remember that the bread I ate during my first visit to Sicily was shaped in a braid (treccia) a bread I also found in the atlas of Sicilian breads. In this case, I added a quarter cup of sourdough starter to the ingredients, as a personal touch.

Black Olive Cheeks (puccia) from Local Breads by Daniel Leader. You can read the recipe here. The only change I made is using less olives (1 cup), half of them oil-cured and half kalamata. I pitted and chopped the olives the evening before making the bread, after preparing the biga, so the morning after all the ingredients were ready. Don't be surprised if these panini (literally, small breads) disappear fast: they are delicious².

Finally, something special to surprise Montalbano: a challah bread made with mostly whole-wheat flour, compliments of Peter Reinhart. This was my first try at challah and in honor of the fact that when I buy challah, I usually get one with poppy seeds (semi di papavero), because it is my husband's favorite, I decided to devote half the surface to each kind of seed. A first challah experience and a very satisfying one.

Each of these breads has a different personality, due to the different ingredients. As my next step of my Montalbano-inspired exploration of the world of breads, I would like to try a recipe I found in a recently-purchased bread-making book, but first I need first to get some durum flour. More on this in a future post.

I wanted a photo showing sesame seeds ready to be picked up "with your forefinger moistened by saliva," so here you can see the S-shaped bread above sliced and spread with foods whose identity will be revealed in the near future.

On May 23, 2009, Camilleri uncovered la statua di Montalbano (Montalbano's statue) in his home town (Porto Empedocle Vigata, see my first post for details on this name). If you follow the link and then click on the word avanti (forward) you can see a close-up. A month prior to the unveiling of the statue, Camilleri had written an article about it for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in which he described how one day he had met a person strikingly resembling his Montalbano. The article ends with a reference to Luigi Pirandello's novel One, No One and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila), preceded by this words:

So già che molti diranno che non somiglia a Montalbano. E che altrettanti diranno invece che gli somiglia. È inevitabile: ogni lettore si crea un suo Montalbano.

I know that many people will say that it doesn't look like Montalbano. And just as many will say that it looks like him. It's inevitable: each reader creates his or her own Montalbano.

This is, as you may have guessed, my contribution to the eigth edition of Novel Food, a literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I cooked up a few seasons back and have been co-hosting ever since.

My portion of the roundup is here and Lisa's portion is here.

Hear me pronounce the words on the quattro tipi di pane audio file [mp3] or go to the quattro tipi di pane audio page for more listening options.

¹ I had never heard of a bread called lunetta, so I did a bit of search on the web. I found an atlas of Sicilian breads, which includes a reference to lunedde, votive breads with the imprint of a hand. Here I read that these panini are spiral-shaped and that the hand imprint symbolizes Our Lady of Sorrows. Unfortunately, I could not find a photo of lunedde nor a mention of sesame seeds on their surface, so I am not sure whether there is a connection. On the other hand, the pane casereccio di Lentini is S-shaped and covered with sesame seeds. There is also a crescent-shaped bread called laddu or ladduzzu, and the reason I looked at it is that the Italian lunetta means lunette. On this page there is a bread called lunetta that is crescent-shaped and seedless. In summary, I am still not sure about the Italian connections of KAF's lunetta. If anybody is able to provide information, I would be very grateful. 

² In the book, Leader says that he first saw these rolls in Lucca (Tuscany). A web search points to Puglia as the origin of a bread called puccia, a version of which is puccia with olives. Readers from Puglia, would you like to comment on this? There is also a bread called puccia in Veneto, made with rye flour.

Novel Food #7: tartina

canapé

The title of this post should have been tramezzino (triangular sandwich). But life had other plans and so it is tartina. By the way, in Italian we also use the word canapè. Tartine lined up on a tray were one of the attractions of parties when I was a child. Round or rectangular, made of pancarrè (also called pane in cassetta, sandwich loaf) and multi-layered: first butter, then slices of hard-boiled eggs or of smoked salmon, or some tuna salad, and finally gelatin. I think the latter was not always there, but it was a big hit with my young palate. 

But at the beginning, it was supposed to be sandwich, tea sandwiches to be precise:

RUTH: I am profoundly disturbed, Madame Arcati, and I want your help.
MADAME ARCATI: Aha! I thought as much. What's in these sandwiches?
RUTH: Cucumber.
MADAME ARCATI: Couldn't be better. [she takes one] Fire away.

I beg to differ, but I forgive Madame Arcati, since she is a charming character in Noel Coward's 1941 play Blithe Spirit. I have not seen the play itself, but I have enjoyed enormously the 42nd Street Moon's production of the 1964 musical inspired by it, called High Spirits. Our evening at the theater was great fun and it prompted me to read the actual play.

Charles Condomine invites Madame Arcati to hold a séance at his house. He doesn't tell her, but he is merely interested in observing her to get material for a book he's writing. His wife, Ruth, and two guests are also present. At the end, Charles is visited by the ghost of his deceased wife, Elvira, whom only he can see. Elvira becomes the ghost-in-residence of the Condomines' house, an unacceptable situation for Ruth. In the scene above, Ruth asks Madame Arcati to send Elvira back. This is not an easy task, and a few more things happen, culminating with an intense effort by Madame Arcati during which sandwiches are on stage, though they are not offered to any of the characters. By then there are two ghosts in the room. We then get to the final scene, where the focus is on Edith, the maid, and, briefly, on sandwiches again:

MADAME ARCATI: Give her a sandwich.
EDITH [drawing away]: I don't want a sandwich. I want to go back to bed...
CHARLES [handing EDITH the plate]: Here, Edith.
MADAME ARCATI: Nonsense—a big healthy girl like you saying no to a delicious sandwich—I never heard of such a thing—sit down.
EDITH [to CHARLES]: Please, sir, I...
CHARLES: Please, do as Madame Arcati says, Edith.
RUTH [sitting down and sniffing]: I haven't done nothing wrong.

You can enjoy the story from beginning to end by watching the play, or reading it like I did, or by watching the musical or one of the movies (1945 and 1956). I will not reveal what happens at the end, but I will tell you what is the closing statement (by a character that shall remain unnamed):

Good-bye again—parting is such sweet sorrow.

I have been experimenting with a King Arthur Flour's recipe for oatmeal bread (pane all'avena), which makes a very nice sandwich bread. The last specimen I produced was really excellent and therefore I decided to use it to make some tramezzini to offer to Madame Arcati, though I would hold the cucumber. At the last minute, however, I changed plans and decided to make butterless tartine instead. I have not yet asked Madame Arcati whether she likes tartine as well as she likes cucumber sandwiches. I trust she will.

To begin with, my oatmeal bread looks and smells a lot better than the white pancarrè of my childhood memory. The original recipe is available here. I made several changes to the ingredient list and one important change to the execution. As I mentioned in a recent post, every month I get some truly special grains as my share of the Shakefork Community Farm.

The share includes cracked oats, which make great oatmeal and which I am using in the bread. When I made the bread the first few times, I soaked the sifted cracked oats in the warmed up milk for half an hour or so before use. Then I took a class on making sourdough bread, and a brief exchange with the teacher made me try an overnight soaking for the cracked oats. The result has been such that I have been doing it ever since. With all my tweaks, the list of ingredients is as follows:

• 2.5 cups bread flour
• 1/2 cup fine whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup cracked oats
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1.5 cups warm milk (I used nonfat)
• 1/2 cups raisins or currants

And the difference in the execution is that I warm up the milk and soak the cracked oats in it overnight, in the fridge once the milk has cooled. The morning after, I warm it up again before use.

The toppings of my tartine were (from the left): frittatina decorated with sliced almonds (mandorle), muhammara and heart-shaped slices of Colby cheese; ricotta and miele alla lavanda (lavender honey); ricotta and marmellata di mirtilli (blueberry spread). Most of the ingredients were homemade by me (no, not the honey). My tartine, served for breakfast, were a success.

As a closing note, if you are interested in seeing the musical and you live in the Bay Area or thereabouts, the show is at the Eureka Theater in San Francisco and it will run until April 12. If you live in NYC or thereabouts, you can see the play at the Shubert Theater on Broadway.

This is, as you may have imagined, my contribution to the seventh edition of Novel Food, a literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I cooked up a few seasons back and have been co-hosting ever since.

My portion of the roundup is here and Lisa's portion is here.

Hear me pronounce the words on the tartina audio file [mp3] or go to the tartina audio page for more listening options.

pane alla ricotta

As you know, in the past few months I have been experimenting with homemade ricotta (ricotta fatta in casa). The most recent cheese I made is Stirred-curd Cheddar, according to recipe in the book Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. I then proceeded to make ricotta with the leftover whey (siero di latte) and, though the result was not among my best, it was flavorful and creamy. I decided to use it to make something new: pane alla ricotta (ricotta bread), a recipe from the book Local Breads, by Daniel Leader, who says he obtained it from a Florentine baker. I like Local Breads a lot: it contains a nice selection of breads from different parts of Europe, each with background information and its own story. Christine of Christine Cooks introduced me to this book and I am very grateful that she did: it has become a trusted companion of some of my kitchen adventures.

I love making bread with interesting ingredients, like fresh herbs, olives, raisins, etc. I had the exact amount of ricotta to prepare one loaf (or half the original recipe, which makes two loaves). You can take a look at the recipe over at Andrea's Recipes. I used olive oil instead of butter and my homemade ricotta, which was not whole-milk, as it was made from whey (to which I added some milk, as described in my post).

Back to the bread, I loved the result: delicate is the keyword, describing both texture and flavor.

The interest about making bread with ricotta was kindled by a recipe for panini alla ricotta (ricotta rolls) that Francesca of francescav posted not long ago. Note that translating bread recipes between Italian and English requires translating the yeast quantity. In fact, in Italy we use lievito di birra, fresh yeast sold compressed in small cakes (25 g each) and available in the refrigerated section of grocery stores, rather than active dry yeast or instant yeast, the latter used by Daniel Leader in his recipes. I have never tried to make the conversion: there are rules on this page. However, as I read on this page, fresh yeast is sold in this country in cakes weighing 0.6 oz. or 2 oz. each, while 25 g correspond to 0.9 oz. I will come back to this topic after I have had a chance to do some testing.

Hear me pronounce the words on the pane alla ricotta audio file [mp3] or go to the pane alla ricotta audio page for more listening options.