Finalmente un po' di ricette 'panose'!

I bake a different type of bread once per week, and I never have time to post about it. So I decided I'll put together some of the breads that I made in the past month and dedicate a post to it! Here is a graphic summary:
From the top left, clockwise:
Fiore di farina di riso integrale e avena (Flower with whole rice and oat flour), Ciabatta/focaccia con olive nere (Ciabatta/focaccia with black olives), Pane di mais con semini di sesamo (Corn flour bread with sesame seeds), Pane di farina di ceci e farina integrale (Garbanzo bean and whole wheat flour bread)

For almost all these recipes, the doses are very much 'by eye', except for the Ciabatta/focaccia, which I took the recipe from this website. So, in general, my bread making procedure is this: pour ~2 cups of warm water in a bowl, add ~2 tsp active yeast, mix and add ~1 tsp sugar, mix again. Then, add as much flour as it's necessary to make a workable dough. If I want a softer and more airy bread, I try to use as little flour as possible, and I leave the dough a bit sticky. Then, I knead the dough for 8-10 minutes, adding flour if I need it not to stick too much, and I let it to rest for 1-2 hours (depends if I have time to wait or not - the longer the wait, the fluffier the bread, usually, but good results are obtained also with just one hour wait). Then I divide the dough into 2-3 balls, or into smaller pieces if I decide to make rolls (NB - the dough for rolls definitely needs to be more sticky than regular bread). I leave the shapes to rise for another hour, on the buttered (or oiled) and floured baking pan I'm going to use to cook them. In the meanwhile I warm up a stone in the oven at 450 F, with a container with some water inside (that helps making a harder crust outside and a moist dough inside - you can not put it if you are making rolls). Then I put the shapes in the oven, on the stone. It takes about 20-30 minutes to cook them, depending on how big they are. Usually I understand that they are cooked if they are golden and hard when I tap on them. I take them out of the oven and remove them from the baking pan, and let them cool on a wire rack, letting air circulate around them.
Given this general procedure, here are some details concerning the different breads.
Fiore di farina di riso integrale e avena (Flower with whole rice and oat flour)
The dough for this bread was made with 1/3 regular flour, 1/3 oat flour and 1/3 whole rice flour, and I left it a bit sticky, without bothering kneading it too much. I made rolls, and assembled them inside a round pan with high borders, which I usually use for cakes. I gave the flour shape because I was inspired to do so. :) The rolls were really nice and soft and the oat and rice flours gave a slightly sweet taste to the bread. Very good.
Ciabatta/focaccia con olive nere (Ciabatta/focaccia with black olives)
I decided to make this bread when I saw it on Chanit's wonderful blog 'My mom's recipes and more'(Thu Jul 17th, 2007). This is one of the best blogs you can find if you want bread and bread-related recipes, visit it! For this recipe, you need to make a starter with a part of the flour, yeast and water the night before you make the bread. The whole recipe can be found here. As always, every time I try to follow a recipe from A to Z, it doesn't really come out as I thought it would. Indeed, my bread was more like a focaccia than like a ciabatta (Chanit's looks more ciabatta). In the recipe, oil is added to the dough - I followed this suggestion, and I also used the suggested amount of flour and water. But the dough turned out very sticky and didn't maintain a real shape when I put it on the baking pan. It was actually absolutely delicious, different from my usual breads, more soft and airy, but I felt it was more similar to a focaccia (for its softness and for the presence of oil) rather than a ciabatta. So, maybe I'll try to make a real ciabatta another time! In any case, thanks Chanit for showing this recipe!

Pane di mais con semini di sesamo (Corn flour bread with sesame seeds)
I already made a bread with corn flour in the past. In this case, though I used almost all corn flour (~3/4 corn flour and ~1/4 regular flour. So, it was really like eating polenta-tasting bread! It was very good and pretty to see (I added the sesame seeds on the surface of the bread before baking it).

Pane di farina di ceci e farina integrale (Garbanzo bean and whole wheat flour bread)
This is my last creation and we're still enjoying it - I was a bit scared to try, but I finally decided to make some bread using garbanzo bean flour! So I used ~1/4 garbanzo bean flour, 1/4 whole wheat flour and 1/2 regular white flour. I added ~2 tbsp olive oil to the dough. I left it a little sticky and didn't bother kneading it for more than 7 minutes. The result was really good. The taste of the garbanzo bean flour is very definite in the bread, a little bit like eating a farinata-bread. It's absolutely delicious if toasted and eaten with butter or olive oil! Mmm.. maybe I should go eat a piece of it now!!

Pane con orzo e segale

I made this bread in two variations: using rolled oat flakes, and oat flour. I think I prefer the first.. I'll try to write down the recipes here, although I made them 'by eye' (I tried to measure what I was adding the second time, for the oat flour version, but it's always hard to keep exact track. So please forgive me if the doses are not super precise.. in any case, I don't think it can come out bad, considering I made it twice in this inaccurate way and it was good every time).
These recipes are dedicated to Amit!

Pane integrale con orzo e segale (Oat and rye whole bread)
2 cups lukewarm water
2 tsp yeast + 1 tsp sugar
2 cups oat flour
2 cups rye flour
2 cups whole weat flour
~1 tbsp salt
Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add 1 tsp sugar, mix and let rest for ~5 min. Add the flours to the water/yeast mixture, mixing after every addition. Start working it with your hands when possible. Add salt. Knead the dough for ~7-10 minutes, adding whole weat flour if it's too sticky. This dough will not become as elastic as a regular white bread dough, because none of the flours you've added contain a high lever of gluten (which is what makes the dough elastic). So, don't worry about it.. Let the dough rest for at least one hour (better two), then divide it in two or three shapes (depending on how big you want them) and put them on your baking pan. I wouldn't recommend cutting the dough with deep incisions ob the surface (like you can do with the regular bread), because this dough isn't elastic and the cuts will look bad on it (found out by experience...).
Let the loaves rest for another hour, then bake at 400 F for ~30 minutes. To have a more crunchy crust, leave a pot with water inside the oven while you cook the bread. Once cooked, remove the bread from the baking pan and put it to cool down on a rack.

Variazione con fiocchi di orzo (Variation with rolled oat flakes)
1 1/2 cups water
2 tsp yeast + 1 tsp sugar
1 1/2 cups rolled oat and hot water to cover them
2 cups rye flour
~3 cups wheat flour
The dough and the procedure are very similar to the ones above. The difference is that instead of oat flour, you use oat flakes. Place the flakes in a bowl and cover them with how water. Let this mixture rest for ~15 min. Dissolve the yeast in water and add sugar as described above. Add the soaked oat flakes and all the flours and proceed as described above. You may need more or less wheat flour (depending on the brand, they can adsorb more or less water). This dough seemed to be more elastic, maybe because there was more wheat flour. As before, knead, wait, divide into shapes. If you want, in this case, you can make some not too deep incisions on the surface of this dough (it's elastic enough for them). Bake and cool down as described above.

Panini con formaggio tipo jocca e aneto

Once I was blog-surfing and I found a wonderful looking pyramid of bread rolls made with cream cheese and dill, on the really nice blog 'My kitchen: my laboratory'. So, as soon as I happened to have some dill at home, I prepared similar rolls with cottage cheese instead of cream cheese. The result was really delicious.
Panini con formaggio tipo jocca e aneto / Cottage cheese and dill rolls
Ingredients (if you compare with Angie's recipe, there are a few variations, but not too much)
2 tsp yeast
1 cup warm water
4 cups flour
1 egg
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1 red onion
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill
2 tbsp olive oil
Procedure
Let the yeast dissolve in the water for a few minutes. In the meanwhile, finely chop the onion and add to the cottage cheese. Add the yeast and water mixture to the flour, then add the egg (beat it a little), the cheese/onion mixture, the olive oil, the dill, and a bit of salt (I put ~1 tbsp). Stir with a wooden spoon. You can add some flour if it's too sticky. Angie suggests kneading it, but I found it impossible unless I added a lot of flour, so I decided to just stir vigorously with the wooden spoon, like I did with my other cheese bread. I mixed for ~ 120 turns with the wooden spoon, then, quite tired, I left the dough and myself rest for about 1 hour. Then, I deflated it and let it raise again for ~ 10 minutes. Then I divided it in 12 rolls and placed them in a baking pan (I wasn't able to make the nice pyramid that Angie made :) ), added some flour on them, and baked them for ~45 min.
The result was something amazingly good, soft and moist, and a bit crusty on the outside... needs to be repeated!

Pane integrale alle noci

One more bread. Are you getting tired of bread recipes?!? :) I'm not tired of making it and eating it :) So, now I'm completely independent on recipes, and I just play around with flours and ingredients. A few days ago, our Italian neighbor who lives upstairs gave me some of his bread to try (he's also a bread-maniac). He has a sort of sourdough starter that he keeps using to make all his bread, so his is usually denser than mine. I like his very much too, and I loved in particular this last one that he made me try, which had walnuts in it. So of course I had to try to make my version of it, and I came up with something that again is within the top breads I baked.

Pane integrale alle noci / Whole wheat bread with walnuts
I wanted to try to make a bread using just whole wheat flour, without mixing it with regular flour. I used similar flour/water/yeast proportions as always (see this recipe, for example), with maybe a tiny bit more yeast because I thought this was going to be a heavier type of flour to work with. I added about 1 cup of walnuts roughly broken by hands to the total dough (~ 6-7 cups of flour, I think). I kneaded for a bit longer than usual (~ 15 minutes instead of 10), because this dough didn't seem to be as easy to make elastic as usual. Of course the whole wheat flour behaves differently than white flour. I had some more time than usual, so it rose for ~2 hours, then I divided it in two shapes and let it raise for another hour. I cooked it at 400 F for ~25 minutes, with a pot of water in the oven, and then took it out and let it cool down on a wire rack for a few hours before trying to cut it.
It was a real delight, and not hard to make at all.


I recently found out that the next 'Waiter, that's something in my.. basket' is going to be about bread!! And I'm still within the deadline. So I'm going to put this as an entry for the event, together my other two bread recipes that I decided are the 'best three' of my recent production: 'pane con zucchini' e 'pane al formaggio'.
The event is hosted by Spittoon extra, check out the link here.

Pani di mais

Recently I decided to just try to mix different flours and see what would happen of my bread. I was into corn, so I made two different 'corny' breads :)

Pane con farina di polenta / Cornmeal bread
To make this bread, I mixed about 1/2 and 1/2 regular white flour and cornmeal. As usual, dissolve 2 tsp yeast in 1 cup warm water, add a little sugar and let it foam. Add flour to this mixture until it's workable with your hands (start with 2 cups white flour and 2 cups cornmeal and keep adding). Add about 2 tbsp salt. Knead for 10 minutes, let it rest for 1 1/2 hour, knead for 2 minutes and divide in two shapes. Make nice and deep lines on the surface of the loaf, to obtain the drawing you prefer, and let it rest for another hour or so. Bake at 400 F for ~30 min leaving a pot of water in the oven. Cool down on wire racks.
This bread looked really nice and the taste was also very good. I just didn't like too much some of the cornmeal grains that remained too crunchy. It improved when toasted. Anyway, thus, I tried with a finer corn flour.

Pane con farina di mais / Corn flour bread
This was a really really good bread, probably ranked among the best breads I made recently. The procedure is similar to above, except for the fact that I used 2/3 corn flour and 1/3 white flour, more or less. The bread was soft but not fluffy and the taste delicious. It really reminded me of eating polenta, although it was a bread!

Pane con la pasta della pizza

What do you do if you have some pizza dough left? Well. If you want to make more pizza the day after, you can definitely do so. But if you're tired of pizza, just deflate the pizza dough, make it into bread shapes, let it rise again, and there you go! Wonderful bread the day after the pizza odissey :)
To have this type of bread loaf, shape the dough in elongated pieces about 3 inches in diameter, you choose the length. Before the shapes start rising again, cut them with two-three sharp and deep cuts on their surface, almost parallel to the bread. This will produce the nice lines on top of the bread crust. As usual, bake at 400F in an oven containing a pot of water to humidify and make a hard crust, for about 20-30 minutes, and once cooked, let cool on wire racks.

Pane al formaggio

Here is another of the many breads I've been baking recently. This bread contains some cheddar cheese in the dough, which gives it a nice yellow warm color, and a very good taste. The dough is extremely interesting to make, because it doesn't require kneading: it's so soft that you can only mix it with a wooden spoon for a while, and then just let it raise. Honestly I think it's one of the best breads I baked in this period.

Pane al formaggio/Cheese bread
Ingredienti
4 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp dry yeast
1 cup milk, scalded
3 tbsp sugar (I put only 1 1/2)
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp butter, melted + some to glaze
1 cup tepid water
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese
Preparazione
Add sugar, salt, melted butter to milk and let cool until warm. In the meanwhile put the water and the yeast in a bowl, let it rest. Then add the milk mixture, the cheese and the flour. Beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes or with a wooden spoon for ~ 300 strokes (I tried this and I must admit I was done at 200.. it's quite tiring!!).
Cover the dough and let it raise for ~ 1 h. Then stir it down and beat it for 30 seconds. Put the dough in 2 glass oven proof pans, buttered (8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inchese, or ~20 by 10 cm). I actually used some round and oval ones that I had. Bake at 350 F for 30 to 40 minutes, then remove the loaves from the pans and brush some melted butter on their top. Let cool on wire racks.
The recipe is from my usual beloved 'Breads' book, from 'The good cook' series.

I put this bread as one of my entries for the next 'Waiter, that's something in my.. basket', which is going to be about bread!! After baking lots of breads, I decided this counts within the 'top three' of my recent production, together with : 'pane con zucchini' e 'pane integrale alle noci'.
The event is hosted by Spittoon extra, check out the link here.

Crescia

At last I have a little time to finish to post my Easter recipes! This 'crescia' was a great success, so I'm going to give you the recipe even though Easter is long gone. In the end, it's just a bread, you can make it anytime.
Traditionally, though, it's eaten for Easter breakfast in Naples region, with cheese and ham (that's how you should serve it).

Crescia
This recipe was taken from Cooker.net and it was written by Clamilla.
Ingredients:
1 lb flour
1 cup parmigiano grated
2/3 cup olive oil
5 eggs
2 tsp yeast
1/2 cup warm milk
1 tsp sugar
~1 tbsp salt
pepper
Procedure:
Dissolve yeast in milk, add sugar. Mix flour and cheese, make a hole in the center and pour the oil, salt, pepper, eggs, and the dissolved yeast. Mix, and then knead for ten minutes. Add flour if you need, but you shouldn't need too much of it.
Make a ball with the dough, put it in a buttered and floured pan with high borders. Cover and let raise in the oven at the lowest possible setting (200F or so) for 2 hours. Now, pay attention: I didn't realize how much it would raise. I should have, I know: 'crescia' in Italian is related to 'crescere', which means 'to grow'. So after two hours my 'crescia' almost reached the top of the oven, and I had to lower the rack in a position closer to the bottom. This messed up the rising a little bit. You should not have to move the crescia once it started raising. Anyway, the result was still delicious, but I guess it could have been even fluffier. So, don't move it, and after two hours increase the temperature to 250 F for 10 min, and then bring it to 350 for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out dry if you poke it. When you take the crescia out from the oven, flip it and let it deflate. Mine was harder on the outside, and it was alrady deflated because of my earlier move, so I didn't have to do this step. I guess mine wasn't the best crescia ever, but considering that neither I nor my guest ever tried the original one, we were all very satisfied of the result. Let me know if you try this!

Un altro tipo di pane: panini integrali al latte

As I said, I'm now determined to try many of the recipes from my 'bread' cookbook. I decided I will alternate and make some 'rich' bread followed by some 'simpler' bread. So last time it was the 'rich' bread, with zucchini. This time I wanted to try these small breads with milk, supposedly of Italian origin.

Panini integrali al latte / 'Homemade Italian Milk Bread'
Mix 1 1/2 cups milk with 1 1/2 cups warm water. Take a little bit of this mixture out, and dissolve 2 1/2 tsp yeast with a little sugar in it. Let bubble. Add 4 cups white flour and 2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour, knead for at least 10 min adding salt, and more flour if necessary. Divide into 20 rolls or 2 big loaves and let them rise for at least 1 1/2 hours (as a matter of fact, I let the dough rise for 1 hour as a whole ball, and then I devided it in the 20 rolls and let them rise for another additional ~1.5 hours). Glaze with milk. Bake at 425 F. The recipes says 25-30 min for the rolls and 50 minutes for the loaves. I noticed they were done after ~20 min, and actually I had to pay attention because some of them were burning on the bottom. They're so tiny.. It's good if you have the baker's stone, it keeps the bottom from burning, otherwise you should put them a little bit higher in the oven than usual.
The result was a nice soft bread, but not the best bread I ever made. The crust was harder when I took it out of the oven, but it softened a lot after the bread cooled down, even though I was using a wire rack for the cooling. So, it's a bit 'spongy' to eat it by itself, although it's perfect to soak the olive oil in your plate after you have tomato salad, and it's nice to make tiny panini (sandwiches) with it.

Un nuovo pane!

My friend Romelia gave me four wonderful cookbooks when she was moving out.. she has a lot and she thought these were four too many.. but funnily enough, even though I love to cook, I don't have _that_ many cookbooks. I mostly improvise. But baking is an art that needs to be learnt well, before improvisation is allowed, I believe. So, I got four baking books: Breads, Pies and Pastries, Cookies and Crackers, and Cakes. Ah, they're so wonderful! So I decided I would start trying to make some type of bread different from my usual one. I already tested the oven of the Berkeley apartment with my typical biova, and it turned out wonderful. So I decided it was time for me to try something new.. also, as a side note, I've been trying to change my breakfast, from milk and cereals, to milk and bread. I find it very annoying to have to pay so much for a box of cereals that's nothing other than some dried bread and fruit, in the end. So.. here is my first experiment:

Pane con zucchini / Bread with zucchini !
To make it, coarsely blend 4 small zucchini, add salt to them, add 5 cups of flour and 2 tsp yeast dissolved with a little bit of warm water and sugar. Mix, and keep adding water until the dough becomes workable. Knead for 10 minutes, adding salt and flour if necessary. Let the dough rest until it doubles in volume, ~ 1h 30 min. Knead some more and give it a shape. Put it on a lightly greased baking pan. Let rest for another hour. Brush a little bit of olive oil on the surface so that the zucchini don't get burned. Heat up the oven at 425 F. Cook for ~50-60 minutes. Cool down on a rack.
The result is a delicious, dense, and moist bread with a hard crust. The taste is heavenly. The zucchini add a delicate flavor that can be tasted in the background. It's wonderful also toasted, since it remains moist anyway. For example, look at this slice, toasted and with a little butter on the right side.. wouldn't you like to try it?!?
I had this bread with many different toppings, ranging from apple sauce to tomato and cheese. Small note: the original recipe said to let the zucchini stand with the salt for 30 min and then remove the excess water. I didn't do it, I thought I'd just add less water in the dough. It was good anyway, in my opinion (and also in the opinion of everyone who tried..). :) Now the bread is almost finished.. mmm... what's going to be the next bread I make? :)

I put this bread as one of my entries for the next 'Waiter, that's something in my.. basket', which is going to be about bread!! After baking lots of breads, I decided this counts within the 'top three' of my recent production, together with : 'pane al formaggio' e 'pane integrale alle noci'.
The event is hosted by Spittoon extra, check out the link here.

Un'altra ricetta per il pane

I already explained how to make italian biova. This time, though, I improvised a little bit, and the result was even better.
In fact, this time the dinner was on a Friday, and I didn't have time to wait four hours for the bread to rise.. so I made the dough the night before.
The doses are, very approximatively:
1.5 cups warm water
1.5 tsp yeast
6 cups flour
2 tbsp salt
Dissolve the yeast in the water, and add a tsp sugar to activate it. Make sure it bubbles. Add the flour into the water/yeast mixture, stirring, and when it's workable, start kneading it on a floured surface. You may have to add a little bit less or more flour depending on your flour type. After 2 min of kneading add the salt on its surface and keep kneading so it gets all incorporated. You should knead the dough for at least ten minutes.
Let it rest overnight in the fridge. The day after, deflate the dough, which will have doubled its volume, knead for one more minute, and let it rest out of the fridge for another 8 hours (while you go to work :) ). Then, deflate it, and make two balls out of it, and let them rest for another hour or two, depending on how much time you have. Cook in the oven, preheated, at 400 F (if possible, on a stone) for ~30 min. Take it out when the crust is gold, and let it cool down on a rack. You can cut it after at least 10 min (better 20) of cooling.
This bread is really wonderful. You can add a little bit more salt, if you like it more savory.

Incontri dolciari - banana bread

Recently I was in the mood of making some desserts and I thought it's a nice way to invite people over if you don't have time to make a whole dinner.. so we invited our friends after dinner, for desserts and drinks.
I had been wanting to make banana bread in a long time, and at last I had the occasion: after leaving for Thanksgiving, 6 bananas that we left home were ripe enough for me to use them for this purpose and to make also some banana ice cream to go with it! So here is my production:
Banana bread (pane di banane)
Ingredients (in the recipes you usually find around, they use shortenings or oils instead of butter. I wanted to use butter, for once).
3 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 stick (100 g) butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped walnuts
Mix eggs and bananas and then add all the other ingredients. Pour in a loaf pan and bake at 350 for about 1 h.

It was _really_ good. It also went perfectly well with the banana ice-cream that I made (no picture, sorry, but at least, recipe).

Banana-rum ice-cream (gelato alla banana e rum)
600 ml milk
200 ml heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
3 ripe bananas
4 tbsp rum
Blend everything and pour in the ice-cream maker. Stir for about 1 hour or until it stops and put in the freezer for at least 1-2 hours before serving it.
I was very happy of this creation. I'm now able to improvise ice-cream recipes - a useful knowledge to have :)

Panini dolci e salati

The sweet and savory breads I made for the brunch were really good, and Mariana asked me for the recipe.. so here they are!

Panini dolci con frutta secca (Sweet bread with dried fruit)
I found inspiration for this recipe from cooker.net, as usual. The original recipe in Italian can be found here... grazie, Miciapallina!!. I slightly modified the doses and used figs instead of apricots and walnuts instead of hazelnuts.
Ingredients
1 lb flour (I used whole grain flour)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
1/2 cup water, warm
1 cups milk
4 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup dried and grated coconut
1/2 cup minced walnuts
1/2 cup minced dried figs
1 egg, beaten
Dissolve the yeast in warm water, add 1 tsp sugar to it, mix, wait until it bubbles. Mix flour, salt and sugar, and add the yeast to it. Mix, and add the milk and the butter, and knead for ~ 10 minutes. The dough should be a bit humid, because you're now going to add all the dry fruits. Knead all the fruits in the dough. If it's too dry add a bit of water, if it's too wet add some flour.
Let the dough rest for ~1 h, then divide it into small balls and let them rest for another 1/2 h - 1 h. 'Paint' the external part of the dough with the egg.
Cook in the oven at 400 F for ~ 30 min. You should put a pot of water in the oven so the dough doesn't dry out while cooking.
Serve with jam, zabaione (a cream made with eggs, milk and wine, I'll make it and write the recipe sometime), or whatever you feel like. I served it with a wonderful Indian grape chutney, sweet and spicy at the same time.

Panini salati con olive e formaggio (Savory bread with olives and cheese)
Also this recipe comes from cooker.net. Thanks Lokum! Her breads look more like doughnuts, like they were originally supposed to be. The dough is exactly the same as I wrote above for the sweet bread, just, there's less sugar (2 tbsp instead of 4) and more salt (1 tbsp instead of 1 tsp). Moreover, there's one egg beaten in the dough, other than the egg used to 'paint' the bread surface.
Once you have the dough ready (obviously do not add the dried fruit to it!!!), let it rest for 1 hour and then spread it into thin, elongated shapes with a rolling pin. I made 4 ovals, about 12" long and 6" wide. Let the dough rest again for another 30 min-1 hour, then divide the ovals in two parts each, along the long side, and put pieces of olives, or cheese, or both, or whatever else you feel like, in the middle of each part. Roll so that you have the stuffing inside a long roll of dough, and then close the two ends of the rolls, so that you make 'doughnuts', or 'u-shaped bread', as you prefer :) . Paint the surface of the breads with egg, and cook at 400 for ~ 1/2 hour (check after 20 min). In the original recipe, it's suggested to sprinkle with sesame seed before baking.. nice idea, I forgot about it :)
They are really good and you can have fun and try different fillings!

Bigne' o Puffs

Today I had planned on having people at home for a brunch. But of course, I am still a little sick and now poor Lucas is getting sick too.. I really hope he doesn't get too sick, since in two days he has to defend his Ph.D.!!
Anyway, I decided that it didn't matter if no one was coming, I was feeling well enough to try at least one of the recipes that I wanted to make... and it was a good idea, because the 'puffs' came out really good and Lucas and I divoured them all for dinner :)


I took the recipe for this 'puffs' from the Southern Cooking Cookbook that my old and dear friend Seunghee gave me when I left Flordida, as a memory of her and of my time over there. It was a nice present and it's actually a wonderful cookbook. The cookbook said that these puffs were very easy to make, and so I trusted it and tried.
To make them, you have to bring to boil 1 cup of milk and 5 tbsp butter (I put less, ~3.5 tbsp), with a dash of salt. Then add 1 cup of flour altogether and stir quickly until it detaches from the borders of the pan. Then remove from the stove and add 4 eggs, one at a time, incorporating completely each of them. Preheat the oven at 400F, spoon balls of dough about the size of a walnut on a baking sheet covered with anti-sticking paper, cook for 10 min at 400F and then decrease the heat and cook at 350 for another 20-25 min. Cool down avoiding air drafts. I actually turned off the heat after only 20 min, and then cracked the oven open by inserting one of those gloves that you use to take out the food from the oven, and let the puffs cool down in there.
They came out really well! I'd say about 80% were perfect and 20% were a bit flat or with still some dough inside. But most of them were round and empty inside!!

The recipe had a really nice idea for the filling (chicken salad with grapes and peaches), but considering I didn't have chicken or grapes or peaches I decided I would make up something else and leave that for the next time.. :)
So I filled some with a cream made of tuna, yogurt, cream cheese and a little gorgonzola, some with melted munster cheese and milk, some with ricotta and indian spices, and some with apples, blueberry jam and sour cream. All the fillings were warm. The first one I showed on the top of this post was stuffed with the indian style ricotta, and I will show here one of the last ones we made according to Lucas's wonderful idea: filled with honey bought today from the farmers' market!
So, in conclusion, I have to say this dough is actually really easy to make. It literally takes 10 min to prepare it, 5 min to spoon it and 30 min to bake it. It reminds me a little bit of the Italian bigne' that we usually fill with whipped cream (that's why I wanted to try to make some sweet ones), although it's a bit richer than ours. I think next time I'll try the Italian sweet version of the dough and I'll make also this to compare. This will be when I have the real brunch at our place :) - I'm looking forward to it!!!

Della serie: cene italo/spagnole

Our italian/spanish dinner this week was hosted by Crissy, and a new nationality was represented: Peru, thanks to David :)
We're getting better and better and this time we spoke Spanish almost all the time, and Luisa tried to read the Italian cookbook that I brought. We exchanged sayings too .. for example: how do you say 'to be extremely tired' in a colorful way? Lucas, Crissy and I couldn't come out with an American or Italian saying, whereas we found out that in Mexico they say
'cansado como una cucaracha fumigada' (tired as a fumigated cockcroach, stanco come uno scarafaggio spruzzato con l'insetticida) :) :)
And in Peru they say
'cansado como el caballo de los bandidos' (tired as the horse of the bandits, stanco come il cavallo dei banditi) .
So if some readers want to help.. can you find an Italian/American saying for this?!?
The dinner had a 'Halloween' theme, since we are so close to October 31st. So here is our guest Crissy holding the bleeding skull:

More pictures and some recipes below.

For the dinner we were supposed to bring food typical of our countries. So I took the book that my Dad gave me: 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte, Ricettario a Fumetti' by Alberto Calosso and Piero Gallarino (e' bellissimo! Chiunque si interessa di cucina dovrebbe prendere questo libro, e' davveri simpatico, c'e' un pazzo cuoco-cartone che produce ottimi piatti e li illustra :) ). It's a book about cooking from Piemonte, my region. I took a recipe for a soup, because I thought there would be too much other food to make a pasta.
It was really good, so I share the recipe with you (slightly cut down on the butter).
Zuppa di cipolle (Onion soup)
Cut very finely 2 kg onions (~5 medium/big onions). In a pan, put 50g (1/4 stick) of butter and melt it, add the onions and cook very gently for ~20 min. In the meanwhile, melt 30 g (~2 tbs) butter in another pan, add a spoon of flour, and ~ 1 l vegetable broth (I added this much as the recipe said, but I think it's too much, so I had to cook it for a while later to evaporate some liquid) and salt. After the onions are done, blend them to obtain a sort of mousse. Add to the broth. Bring to boil and cook until it's of the thickness you like. Then, add 3 tbsp sour cream (panna da cucina, se ce l'avete a disposizione), mix, and serve hot with crostini (pieces of bread cut and toasted in a pan where some butter (~1/2 tbsp) was melted previously).

Also Lucas cooked! He made cornbread, the style that his grandmother used to make it:
Lucas's grandma's cornbread

Mix 1 lb cornmeal, 1 broccoli bunch cut into pieces, salt, 1 small onion sautee, 1/4 lb melted butter, 12 oz cottage cheese, 4 eggs beaten. Put in a pan, so that it's about 1 1/2 inch thick. Bake at 400 F for 30 min. It was very good!!!

Luisa made a chinese dish, which she explained is commonly cooked in Mexican households of her region, due to the strong influence of Chinese immigrants.
It was very good, but I can't remember the name!

Mariana made the 'Sopa de gato' (soup of the cat), which is neither a soup nor does it contain cat meat :) - but it's a stir fry of tortilla, chorizo and cream. Very yummy :)
(sorry, the picture is blurry).

And Crissy made a wonderful 'Italian roast', which was beef and vegetables slowly cooked in a crockpot with tomatoes and spices for 10 hours. It was delicious.


The dessert was a mixed cheesecake (we didn't make it though) :)
Very good, I couldn't resist trying transparent slices of 3 of the 4 flavors.

I also made another dessert, taken from the Piemontese cookbook, but since I transformed it into a Halloween dessert, I'll describe it in another post.

I just wanted to post a few pictures of the guests of this dinner:

Crissy and David
Luisa and Jorge
Mariana and Trino
Marta and Lucas

Pane di farina integrale stile americano

Lucas's mom gave me a wonderful book titled 'Bread alone', with a huge amount of bread recipes. I am very curious and want to try a lot of them! So I decided to start from the first one, which was called 'Classic country style hearth loaf'. It takes a while but the result is very good.
Some more pictures and the recipe below.

This bread starts with a 'poolish', i.e. a small amount of flour, yeast and water that start the fermentation of the whole bread-to-be. To make it, mix 1/2 cup water at RT with 1/2 tsp yeast, let stand for 1 min, stir until yeast is dissolved, and add 3/4 cup whole weat flour. Cover with moist towel and let rest for 2 hours at RT or overnight in the fridge (that's what I did).
Then, add 2 1/2 cups of water to the poolish, mix, add 1/2 tsp yeast, mix, and start adding flour (I added a mixture of whole weat and regular flour). Add 1 tbsp salt before you finish adding the flour. You should add flour and stir until it becomes solid enough to be workable with your hands. Once it's solid enough start working on it with your hands and add flour until it's not too sticky. They say you should add a total of 5-6 cups of flour but I think I added more than that. Knead for at least 15 minutes (this is a hard thing to do!! you can use a machine, if you want). At the end of the kneading the dough must be elastic, such that if you pull or poak on it it should go back to the original shape. If it doesn't, keep kneading. I did it for 20 minutes..
Then, make the dough into a ball, lightly grease the exterior part with oil or butter (I used oil) and cover with a moist towel. Let rest 2-3 hours (supposedly at 78 F. I think my room temperature was much lower, and I let it rest for a bit longer).
This picture shows how much it raised after that time..I was impressed!
After that time, deflate the dough by punching it in the center, form again into a ball and rest for another 30 minutes.
Deflate the dough again and knead it briefly. Cut into 2 pieces, flatten them and eliminate any air bubbles by squishing them with the palms of your hands. Reshape into balls, and set in bowls covered with towels that you will have floured. Cover and let rest for 1.5-2 hours (proofing). This is how one of them looked like after the proofing.
Preheat the oven and a baking stone in it to 450F (according to the book the preheating should last 45 min. I did it for 20 min only).
Transfer the bread loaves on a floured board, cut them with quick shallow cuts on their surface, and slide them into the oven. Spray the inner walls and the bottom of the oven with water, and immediately close the oven not to lose the water vapors. According to the book, you should then repeat this operation after 3 minutes. Since it seemed like a dangerous operation to me, I didn't repeat it. Cook for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 400F and cook for another 15-20 minutes. Cool the loaves on racks.
The bread was very good, and I think it really came out how it was supposed to, as you can see from this picture that shows the inside of it:
It was a bit different from how I was imagining it would have been, since a 'country bread' in my mind has a much thicker crust and a denser inside, with bubbles of air that are larger, but the dough is denser. So I think this bread is more American counry style bread, whereas the recipe that I used before and posted here was more Italian-style. Both are very good, anyway, although I'm biased towards the Italian version :)

Btw: this is my 100th post!!

Cena indiana - ovvero terza cena italiano/spagnola

Our last Spanish-Italian dinner had an Indian theme at it was hosted at Luisa's and Jorge's house. There was a lot of food, and I have a sample of everything on my plate:
From the top: spicy shrimp, samosas, aromatic rice, rice with lentils, fish kofta, naan bread and pakora (in the center).
The shrimp and the rice with lentils were made by Luisa, the samosas by Crissy, the pakora by Mariana, and the aromatic rice, the fish and the bread by me. The food was very good. There were also desserts.. I can give real Indian names and recipes of the dishes that I made below. Btw, I took all the recipes from this wonderful cook book that my Aunt Carla gave me some time ago. It's called 'Cooking glass Indian', from the 'Women's weekly cookbooks', and it's really nice. Any recipe I tried from that book turned out wonderful! Grazie mille, zia :)

Fish kofta
Boil some water, add salt and throw pieces of white fish fillets in it (1 1/3 lb=700 g), until cooked. Strain fish and reserve 2 cups of broth. Blend fish with 1 onion (cut into pieces), 2 spicy peppers (red in the recipe, I used green ones), and 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves (I used ginger instead). Shape the mixture into elongated cilinders:
Heat 1/2 tbsp butter (ghee in the original recipe) in a non-sticking pan, and grill the fish kofta until browned on each side.
Heat 1/2 tbsp butter (ghee) in a pan, add one minced onion, 2 cloves of garlic, minced, 2 tsps ground coriander, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1/2 tsp ground turmeric, 2 sticks of cinnamon and sautee for a few minutes. Add 3 tomatoes (I used a big can of diced tomatoes), cook until tomatoes are soft, add the fish liquid, and simmer uncovered until sauce thickens. Add fish kofta gently and let them adsorb the liquid for about 5 min. Serve sprinkling with fresh coriander leaves.
It's really really good. It's a bit laborious to prepare, though, I must say: it's hard to grill the kofta without breaking them.

Parsee rice
This is the aromatic rice I made. It's extremely easy to make and the taste is wonderful, really indian. So, to make it, heat 1 tbsp butter (ghee) in a pan, stir in 2 small onions (minced), 3 cloves of garlic (crushed), 3 tsp cumin seeds, 2 tsps black mustard seeds, 4 cardamom pods, 2 bay leaves (I didn't have these so I didn't add them), 1/2 cup (75 g) shelled pistachios. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups (300 g) basmati rice, previously washed and drained. Stir for a few minutes and add 2 3/4 cups (680 ml) chicken stock. Simmer covered for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, fluff with fork and stand for 10 minutes covered before serving.

Naan
Naan is one of the best Indian bread. It's originally from the north of India, and it's cooked in a Tandoor oven. In its absence, a grill or a heavy-base pan on a very hot stove can do.
Add 1 tsp dry yeast and 1 tsp sugar to 2/3 cup of warm water. Mix and let stand for 10 min in a warm place. Mix 2 cups (300 g) plain flour and 1 tsp salt in a bowl. Add yeast mixture, 2 tbsps melted butter (ghee), 2 tbsp yogurt. Mix until you have a soft dough. In my case I thought I needed some more flour, so be aware of this. Kneed on a floured surface for at least 5 minutes, until the dough is elastic. Let stand in warm place, in a lightly greased container for 1 1/2 hour or at least dough doubled its volume (1 hour for me). Then, knead dough for another 5 minutes and divide into 6 balls. Flatten with a rolling pin until you obtain round 20 cm (~8 inch) Naan.
The best way to cook this would be to have a small grill that you can place directly on your stoves, so it gets really hot. I looked for it but couldn't find it. So, I lightly buttered a non-sticking pan and placed it on High heat on the stove. Once the pan is very hot, place one round disk, grill for about 2 min each side or until puffed and browned. Sprinkle with onion seed (I didn't do this) and grill for further 30 sec.Rebutter the pan in between each Naan. Keep Naan warm before serving it. It's really delicious (and Crissy just told me that Naan bought at the grocery store costs $9 for 2 disks!!!!).

As I mentioned earlier, we also had desserts! (Yes, we had a lot of food :) )
Luisa made this delicious Mango mousse:
And I made a semolina pudding.

Rava Kesari
Combine 1/2 cup sugar (1 cup in the original recipe! But to our taste, this sweetness was perfect), 1 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup milk, 1 tsp ground cardamom in a pan and heat stirring until sugar is dissolved. Heat 4 tbsps butter in a pan and add 1 cup (160 g) semolina. Stir for about 1 min until all semolina is covered with butter. Add water mixture and cook stirring until the mixture thickens and detaches from the borders of the pan. Add 2 tbsps raisins and 2 tbsps slivered almonds. Spread mixture in pre-greased rectangular 19 cm x 29 cm pan, and add whole almonds on top, dividing the dough into diamond shapes. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. After this time, the dessert should be firm enough to be cut and divided. Mine wasn't :( - the taste was still good, but it was more like a real pudding. I think I didn't evaporate enough of the water/milk mixture.

During the dinner, we spoke a lot of English!! Shame on us :) - but actually after the dinner Luisa and I spent a long time speaking in Spanish about pretty serious issues. :)
I forgot to take pictures of ourselves at this dinner! I'll do better next time.