Casatiello

This is not bread for the faint of heart.  Literally.  If you have a heart condition, do NOT make or eat this bread.  It is a one way ticket to the operating room table and a bypass.  As if brioche wasn't rich enough with it's eggs and copious butter, this bread adds salami and cheese!!!!

By the way, it is delicious.

Unlike many of the breads in the BBA, this is a one day affair.  It starts with a 1 hour sponge of flour, yeast, and buttermilk.  The supermarket was all out of buttermilk, so I decided to make my own using heavy cream.  This is a nice trick and leaves you with both buttermilk and some amazing fresh butter.

First, pour the heavy cream into a container you can seal well.

Cover it up and shake, shake, shake.  You are essentially churning the cream.  It will gradually expand - sometimes even filling the container so that you no longer hear any sloshing - but keep shaking.  Eventually, it "breaks" and the butter starts to coagulate and coalesce.  What you are left with is butter and buttermilk.

Now I was ready to make the bread.  I sauteed the sopressata, grated the provolone, and made the dough.

I decided to make the dough into rings because it reminded me of the pork bread my father would bring home from the Italian bakery on Bleeker Street.  It baked up beautifully and was  absolutely delicious.

I should also mention that I decided to replace some of the butter (2 Tbls) in the recipe with some bacon fat.  I mean, at this point, why not?

Yeah, I know it looks like two bagels, but they are much bigger! 

 

Casatiello was a huge hit in the Tito household.  Each slice was laden with cheese and sopressata, and felt like a meal.

Brioche

Next up in the BBA Challenge is Brioche - a yeast bread made with lots of egg and butter.  Reinhart gives three recipes with varying amounts of butter ranging from a full pound to one stick.  I decided on the "middle-class" version with a half pound of butter.

After the usual sponge and kneading (this time almost all in the mixer), I spread it on a half sheet and popped it into the refrigerator overnight.  The next day I decided to make two small loaves and some cinnamon rolls out of the dough.

The smell of butter while these were baking was amazing!  I can't imagine what the "rich man's brioche" is like.  They turned out beautifully, and the cinnamon rolls were a big hit with the kids.

This bread really shines when it is toasted.  I know it's probably overkill, but I did put some butter on top too!

Overall, I liked brioche.  The dough is a bit hard to handle, but the end product is quite delicious.  Thusfar, the BBA hasn't had any recipes I didn't like, but if I had to put them in order, I would rank them like this:

1 - Bagels
2 - Anadama
3 - Artos
4 - Brioche

Zombie Bagels

Next up in the challenge: bagels.  As I wrote in my first post, I actually made these first.  But in the spirit of doing each recipe in order, I decided to revisit this recipe and make some more.  OK, my family made me make some more!

After the sponge stage, and the initial combining, it was time to get kneading.  This was just before the neighborhood Halloween party, so I had already started to "zombify" myself with some fake wounds.  Hey, even zombies like a good NYC style bagel.

I then shaped the dough into balls, followed by rolling the balls into snakes, and then bagel shapes.   After that, it was overnight into the refrigerator. 

In the meantime, I had a Halloween party to go to!

The next day, it was time to boil and bake.  I boiled them in a combination solution containing a tablespoon each of malt and baking soda.  I used sesame seeds (white & black) and pretzel salt as toppings.  They were served with fresh tomato, cream cheese, capers, and smoked salmon.  Once again, they were delicious!