Pane Casereccio

A few friends have asked me to have them over to make bread together, but for one reason or another, it hasn’t happened. Probably because that’ll mean spending 5 minutes making the dough and then trying to find something else to do for 2-3 hours instead of watching it rise. So as a substitute, here’s our secret recipe for making great bread at home without a bread machine - and when I say great, I mean that you’ll feel immoral buying it anymore. If you live in the US, where good bread costs a fortune, this is essential. It’s a no-knead, long rise technique that is so simple, I would be shocked if anyone failed to make it turn out better than most store-bought bread.

Sometime in the afternoon, put 3 cups of flour in a fairly large bowl. I use 2 cups of regular 0 or 00 flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour, but you can change those portions however you like. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and stir it up. Dissolve 1/4 teaspoon of dry yeast (we use lievito di birra naturale) in 1.5 cups of warm water. Once it’s dissolved (about 2 minutes), pour it into the flour and stir well until all the flour is wet. It will be a very wet dough.

And that’s it! Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit somewhere for 12-20 hours. The longer you let it sit the more it will taste like sourdough. So if you’ve done this about 3-4 pm or even 7pm, then the next morning, put a few tablespoons of flour into it and stir it up, which will also compact it again. Let it sit at least 1 hour while you preheat your oven to 230 degrees celsius. This second 1 hour rise is what will make it light and airy with lots of pockets.

I have a baking stone that I put in the over while it’s preheating. A baking sheet will work too, or even an oven proof pan. I then sprinkle a good deal of polenta (corn meal) onto the stone or pan so that the bread won’t stick. I pour in a few more tablespoons of flour and stir it up so it comes away from the bowl and I pretty much just let it flop onto the baking stone, all messy and wet. I then put some water on the top of it (by just wetting my hand and rubbing it on the top, and then bake for 40 minutes, or longer if you want a really thick crust.

If you want a higher bread, like a pagnotta, bake it in a sauté pan or something similar. If you have a terra cotta casserole dish, that would work great as the restricted diameter will make it puff up higher and become more round. Just make sure it’s oven proof and that you either use baking paper or corn meal so it doesn’t stick.

Try it and let me know your results.

Lasagna revisited

I never liked the American version of lasagna with the packaged noodles all ruffled around the edges and dry, tasteless ricotta cheese. When I first came to Italy and had real lasagna, made with besciamella, I was an instant convert. Lasagna is a quick seller at the cafe and, much like everything else we do, it’s never really made the same way twice. Things get made based on what needs to be cooked and maybe bits and pieces of what’s left over from a previous shift. Laura, when she first started, made a radicchio, hazelnut and gorgonzola lasagna that really blew me away - the crushed hazelnuts on top added a texture and sweetness that I’d never imagined could work - this is an example of the fact that when it comes to certain dishes, we’re not afraid to break the rules.

And this brings me to my most recent experiment. Having come back from Bali recently I’ve been trying to incorporate coconut more into my dishes. I’d had rice dishes with toasted coconut and a wonderful smoothie of banana, ananas, dates and coconut. When I came in for my shift the other day there was a note from Laura saying that there were a bunch of carrots that needed to be cooked and a lasagna to be made. I decided to make a velouté of the carrots, blending in some coconut and coriander seed. To offset the sweetness I alternated with swiss chard, cooked in garlic, oil and peperoncino, and some fresh sheep’s milk cheese.

Normally I send a lunch menu out to the nearby office workers around 11 and they come to eat around 1pm. My lasagna came out of the oven at about noon and was pretty much gone by about 3pm. Italians don’t like to see their traditional dishes massacred by Americans - but a coconut/carrot and chard lasagna sounded too interesting for them to pass up. Ultimately I have to say that it worked well and we were all pleasantly surprised at how well the flavors balanced. As I said, it’s rare we make things exactly the same way twice, but this is a dish I’ll be repeating next time I find a surplus of carrots.