Chapter I: The Basics iv. Pane
An Italian meal isn't complete without bread. We begin the meal with bread - dipped generously in a pool of extra-virgin olive oil - and end the meal with bread - used to mop up any traces of sauce leftover in the dish. It is of no consequence that pasta need not an accompanying carbohydrate; it is simply unconscionable that bread would not be served with the meal.
For a few months I worked for an Italian non-profit organization here in New York City. The organization's offices were in a townhouse owned by a private, members-only Italian-American social club and also operated as a full-service restaurant for members. Every day we, the staff, had lunch at 12:00 in the formal dining room and the meal always began with bread served in a basket lined with a white cloth napkin which was ceremoniously placed at the start of the meal in the center of the table.
Growing up, we had a fresh loaf of bread from Dominick's deli every evening. Any leftovers would be used for cold-cut sandwiches for lunch the next day. I think every family had their preferred brand of store bought Italian bread - we were a Zurro's family. As a child my mom used to send me to the deli to pick up the bread and I remember sliding the glass window of the shelf open and squeezing each loaf to make sure it had the right feeling - not too hard, not too squishy, a slight crack when you pressed down on the crust.
Bread was a staple of my childhood diet. My afternoon snack when I got home from school every day was a butter sandwich prepared by my grandma, a literal sandwich of Italian bread and butter, which I devoured eagerly at the kitchen table. This tradition, and the association I have of it with the loving care of my grandmother, has lasted into my adulthood. You will never see me take the filling out of a sandwich, leaving behind the bread, and I will always be skeptical of a restaurant that doesn't serve bread.
Luckily, I am marrying a man whose love of bread is parallel to my own - together we consume bread with abandon. In fact, bread was one of the first things he made for me when we started seeing one another seven years ago. He told me that he loved to bake bread, and perhaps it was at this moment that I knew I had found my soulmate.
His specialty is the boule, a rustic french-style bread with a thick crust and soft fluffy inside, which is more or less equivalent to the Italian pane rustico. Basically, a peasant bread. For my first endeavor into bread-making, we decided to make a rustic boule-style bread with an Italian twist.
The one thing about making bread is that it takes time. Between proofing, rising, and baking, the whole experience takes about a day but obviously you're not involved with the project the whole time.
We almost ran into trouble when we realized we'd scheduled a meeting at a local farm on Sunday morning, when the bread should have been going into the oven. We had to leave the house with the bread rising and it ended up rising for nearly six hours (instead of two and a half). When we got home, we saw that the dough had started to harden on the outside. To accommodate for the extra time that the bread was sitting out, Andrew put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to offset the crust forming too rapidly. This worked really well, the end result was a crusty bread with a nice firm crust and a soft bubbly inside. The Italian twist?
We devoured this bread warm, dipped in EVOO and garlic.
tsp of salt
tsp black pepper
1 tbsp yeast, proofed in warm water with a pinch of sugar
Proof yeast in a cup of warm water with the sugar.
Wait ~5 minutes for yeast to bubble
Mix wet ingredients with dry
Stir with a wooden spoon, in a wooden bowl, until shaggy
Let sit in a covered bowl at room temperature for 18 hours
Knead the dough on a heavily floured surface for ten minutes
Form into a ball (boule), let rest on counter top under covered cloth for 2.5 hours
Heat oven to 425 degrees with a pan in it
When oven is hot, wait another thirty minutes to let everything get really hot
Place the dough as a ball on the pizza stone*
Fill pan with water (this will create steam and delay the crust from forming too quickly)
Cook until golden brown on the outside, about 35 minutes.
For a few months I worked for an Italian non-profit organization here in New York City. The organization's offices were in a townhouse owned by a private, members-only Italian-American social club and also operated as a full-service restaurant for members. Every day we, the staff, had lunch at 12:00 in the formal dining room and the meal always began with bread served in a basket lined with a white cloth napkin which was ceremoniously placed at the start of the meal in the center of the table.
Growing up, we had a fresh loaf of bread from Dominick's deli every evening. Any leftovers would be used for cold-cut sandwiches for lunch the next day. I think every family had their preferred brand of store bought Italian bread - we were a Zurro's family. As a child my mom used to send me to the deli to pick up the bread and I remember sliding the glass window of the shelf open and squeezing each loaf to make sure it had the right feeling - not too hard, not too squishy, a slight crack when you pressed down on the crust.
Bread was a staple of my childhood diet. My afternoon snack when I got home from school every day was a butter sandwich prepared by my grandma, a literal sandwich of Italian bread and butter, which I devoured eagerly at the kitchen table. This tradition, and the association I have of it with the loving care of my grandmother, has lasted into my adulthood. You will never see me take the filling out of a sandwich, leaving behind the bread, and I will always be skeptical of a restaurant that doesn't serve bread.
Luckily, I am marrying a man whose love of bread is parallel to my own - together we consume bread with abandon. In fact, bread was one of the first things he made for me when we started seeing one another seven years ago. He told me that he loved to bake bread, and perhaps it was at this moment that I knew I had found my soulmate.
His specialty is the boule, a rustic french-style bread with a thick crust and soft fluffy inside, which is more or less equivalent to the Italian pane rustico. Basically, a peasant bread. For my first endeavor into bread-making, we decided to make a rustic boule-style bread with an Italian twist.
The one thing about making bread is that it takes time. Between proofing, rising, and baking, the whole experience takes about a day but obviously you're not involved with the project the whole time.
We almost ran into trouble when we realized we'd scheduled a meeting at a local farm on Sunday morning, when the bread should have been going into the oven. We had to leave the house with the bread rising and it ended up rising for nearly six hours (instead of two and a half). When we got home, we saw that the dough had started to harden on the outside. To accommodate for the extra time that the bread was sitting out, Andrew put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to offset the crust forming too rapidly. This worked really well, the end result was a crusty bread with a nice firm crust and a soft bubbly inside. The Italian twist?
We devoured this bread warm, dipped in EVOO and garlic.
Pane Rustico
2 cups of flourtsp of salt
tsp black pepper
1 tbsp yeast, proofed in warm water with a pinch of sugar
Proof yeast in a cup of warm water with the sugar.
Wait ~5 minutes for yeast to bubble
Mix wet ingredients with dry
Stir with a wooden spoon, in a wooden bowl, until shaggy
Let sit in a covered bowl at room temperature for 18 hours
Knead the dough on a heavily floured surface for ten minutes
Form into a ball (boule), let rest on counter top under covered cloth for 2.5 hours
Heat oven to 425 degrees with a pan in it
When oven is hot, wait another thirty minutes to let everything get really hot
Place the dough as a ball on the pizza stone*
Fill pan with water (this will create steam and delay the crust from forming too quickly)
Cook until golden brown on the outside, about 35 minutes.
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