The rain rolled in for a few days and the temps dropped . . . so I made bread!

 Also, my knee felt much better after the surgery, which meant I could stand for kneading etc, without swelling and pain.

I made my favorite dough (the Italian pugliese) then I decided to make a variation that I had been eyeing at the end of the recipe. . . it includes the salty, oily dried black olives.  The recipe has instructions to roll up 200 gram balls.  Mine were bigger than that.  Next time I will make smaller than 200 grams so I can have smaller sized sandwich rolls.  Maybe I will add more olives.

I have a lot of the starter left hanging around in the fridge, so maybe i will crank out another batch even though it will be hot hot hot outside.  The rolls don't take as long to bake as the large loaves of bread.

I love when my dough rises this much!!

It made for a nice roll to be used for toast with cream cheese and/or bacon or a sandwich.

Italian Baker!

 I have been attempting to up my baking skills which has lead to me checking out books from the Dallas Library on baking.  So far it is mostly French but I found The Italian Baker book  to try.   It has a recipe for one of my favorite white crusty, chewy breads . . . Pugliese.   

I have looked at recipes for Pugliese before and thought it was too difficult.  But now that I have made other yeast breads and even ones with starters, I think I might be ready.     Soooooo, I decided to take the plunge.

It does need a Biga (starter) which is fermented over night or at least 12 hours.

The biga did puff up nicely.  

Time to bake some bread!!

 

The crumb looks quite good.  I might have baked a bit longer but I did get a good hollow sound when I knocked on the crust.

Yummmmm, it tastes great with cream cheese and lime curd.   It makes great toast to add any toppings to it . . . Canadian Bacon and Cheddar tastes great too.  I froze some because it is too much for one person.  Thawed out and toasted, it still tastes good.  

But wait!    I have more Biga to use up!!

Time to make some ciabatta!!

ANNNNNNDDDDD . . . . 

The ciabatta turned out even better!  Although the shape is not exactly the slipper shape the book suggests it might be.

An Italian friend said it looked perfect! LOL, look at those holes . . . actually a good sign!!

And, yes, it tasted good . . . works really well to dip into the olive oil and mix of these green olives,

I will move these to a list of "must make again"!