Tag: baking

Like Italian Feather Bread

We bought our copy of Beard on Bread over forty years ago and it still occupies a position of honor among our cookbooks. Beard’s recipe for “Italian Feather Bread” is one of our favorites. It is easy to make, attractive to serve and delicious to eat, especially within three or four hours after baking. The loaves begin drying out after a couple of days, but then the slices are wonderful for French Toast.

For the first few years I followed Beard’s instructions exactly, and we liked the results. As I learned more about baking I reduced the amount of yeast a little, extended the kneading time a bit, lowered the oven temperature and shortened the baking time. Finally I decided to try shaping the loaves a little differently, slashing them as if I were making French bread and baking them in our French bread pan. Jerri and I agreed that this should be our final version.

We still use Beard’s name for the bread, but our guests think of it as a good French bread. I no longer make French bread, but I do make baguettes, which are a kind of true French bread.

INGREDIENTS:

4 tsp. active dry yeast
1 T granulated sugar
1 cup warm water (100° to 105°)
3/4 cup hot water
1/3 cup butter
2 tsp. salt
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
White of one egg

PROCEDURE:

As usual when making bread, scrub your hands like a surgeon.

Heat a cup of water as if you were warming milk for a baby. A drop on the inside of your wrist should feel warm but not hot. Put the water into a large bowl. Stir the sugar and yeast into the water and allow it to begin proofing. When you see a few bubbles rising to the surface, you know that the yeast is working.

Heat three-fourths of a cup of water in the microwave or over very low heat on the cooktop. Cut the butter into small pieces and melt them in the water. Let the water and butter cool to lukewarm and stir in the salt. Stir a cup of flour into the yeast liquid, then add the lukewarm water, salt and butter and beat until you have a smooth liquid. Add the next three cups of the flour a cup at a time, stirring after each addition to mix the batter thoroughly.

At this point begin adding the flour a half cup at a time until the dough begins to come away from the sides of the bowl. Using a spatula, scrape the dough out of the bowl onto a generously floured work surface. Dust your hands with flour, then turn the dough with the spatula or a baker’s scraper while pressing it down with your free hand until the dough is coated with flour and no longer sticks to your hand.

Knead the dough for three or four minutes, dusting the work surface with small amounts of flour if necessary, until you have a tender, smooth elastic dough. Do not knead it too long. Let it rest a few minutes while you prepare a two-loaf French bread pan by greasing it lightly.

Use a baker’s scraper or large knife to divide the dough in half. Roll each half into something resembling a rectangle with lobed edges about eight or nine inches wide and fourteen to fifteen inches long. Form two long loaves by rolling up the dough, pinching the ends as you roll them up. Done right you will have a loaf that is a bit thicker in the middle. Pinch and tuck the ends to make a good seal.

Place the loaves seam side down in the pan, cover them with a damp kitchen towel and allow them to rise until doubled in size in a warm, draft-free place. This can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour or even a little more, depending on how warm it is in your kitchen.

When the loaves have nearly doubled in size, preheat the oven to 400º and beat the egg white with a teaspoon of cold water. When the oven is hot, paint the tops of the loaves with the egg wash and use a razor blade or very sharp knife to make three or four diagonal slashes in the tops of the loaves.

Put the pan on the center shelf in the oven and bake the bread for thirty to forty minutes until the loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped. Better, yet, use an instant-read thermometer to check for doneness after thirty minutes. The loaves are done when the interior temperature is about 195º.

Remove the bread from the oven and cool the loaves on a rack for at least twenty minutes before slicing.

NOTES: This recipe is a good one for someone who has never made a loaf of homemade bread. If you are unsure of how to knead dough, you might want to visit Wikihow.com for an excellent tutorial on how to do it, complete with photos and videos.

You can bake this bread on an ordinary baking sheet if you don’t have a French bread pan. Beard’s original instructions call for greasing the sheet and dusting it with cornmeal. The loaves will not be shaped like French bread and you may have to bake them a little longer, but the bread will taste fine in any case.

Shrine Mont Dinner Rolls

Our good friends Al and Dardi from Richmond, Virginia, drove us to Shrine Mont many years ago. Shrine Mont is the Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration, a retreat and conference center of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in the village of Orkney Springs, Virginia, on the western edge of the Shenandoah Valley.

As Episcopalians Al and Dardi have stayed at Shrine Mont many times. It is a beautiful venue for meditation, worship and conferences, and the eastern slope of Great North Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains is a good place to escape the humid air of tidewater Virginia. It is also a great place to enjoy authentic homestyle southern cooking in either one of the dining halls.

Dardi shared the recipe for Shrine Mont dinner rolls when we raved about them on the drive back to Richmond after our visit. The instructions from Shrine Mont begin by saying you should start these rolls at 10 AM or later in the summer, but you can arrange your own schedule. Just give the rolls plenty of time to rise.

INGREDIENTS:

2 small potatoes (3 to 4 inch diameter)
Cold water to boil the potatoes
1/2 cup lukewarm water
2 T sugar
1 cake or 2 1/4 tsp. yeast
2 tsp. lard
4 to 6 cups all-purpose flour plus extra for kneading
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. butter to brush the tops of the rolls

PROCEDURE:

Stir the sugar and yeast into a half cup of lukewarm water in a small bowl and allow the yeast to proof while you cook the potatoes.

Peel and quarter the potatoes and put them into a saucepan. Add just enough cold water to cover them. Bring the potatoes to a boil, cooking them until they are fork tender, about twenty minutes. Drain but reserve the water. Mash the potatoes thoroughly to make sure no lumps remain. You should have about a cup and a half of mashed potatoes.

Mix the mashed potatoes and lard with the hot potato water in a large mixing bowl. Let this mixture cool to lukewarm, then stir in the yeast mixture. Add a teaspoon of salt to three cups of flour and sift the flour and salt by thirds into the liquid ingredients, stirring well between additions.

Sift in more flour until the dough begins to come away from the sides of the bowl, turn it out on a well-floured surface and knead until it is smooth and elastic. This is a sticky dough, so kneading will take ten to fifteen minutes. Grease the mixing bowl, form the dough into a ball and turn it in the bowl to lightly grease the surface. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and allow the dough to rise until doubled in size.

Grease two nine by thirteen inch baking pans.

Return the dough to the floured surface and press or roll it out to about a three quarter inch thickness. Divide it into equal portions and roll them into balls about two inches in diameter. Place the balls about a half-inch apart in the baking pans, cover them with a damp towel and allow the rolls to rise until doubled in size. A dozen rolls fit nicely into a nine by thirteen-inch pan.

Preheat the oven to 450º while the rolls are rising.

Bake fifteen to twenty minutes until the rolls are lightly browned. Brush the tops with a little butter as soon as you take the rolls from the oven.

NOTES: As copied by Dardi, the recipe says to make the rolls about three hours before serving. This means that the rolls would be rising more than two hours before going into the oven. If you have a cool kitchen, it might take that long, but I just watch the rolls and pop them in the oven when they are ready.

These rolls keep well for up to two days. You can also freeze them, then pop them in the microwave when you want to enjoy “fresh” dinner rolls in minutes.