the bread in one bite

With the approach of the cold season, the fun of cooking is enhanced by a renewed pleasure and we start to receive and pamper our guests with new delicacies. A sure way to surprise them is to welcome them with the unique smell of homemade bread.
Here you will find a miscellaneous of small breads with different flavours and ingredients, based on a simple oil dough - to which you will add all the ingredients that your imagination can suggest – that perfectly fit to an informal buffet or even a served dinner.  You find this article in Open Kitchen Magazine nr. 1.

 

Preparation time: 1hr + 1h30’ to rest the dough

Ingredients for 10 people 

• 1 kg of strong flour
• 40g semolina
• 500g of water
• 100g of extra virgin olive oil
• 15g of salt
• 30g of yeast

Filling: pesto –  walnuts - hazelnuts – chilli peppers – Parmesan cheese – 10 pitted Greek olives – caraway seeds – 50 gr soaked raisins.

Mix the flour sifted with crumbled yeast and the semolina, add salt, water and oil, mix well and let raise the dough for 1 hour. After this time, resume the dough and knead a few minutes, add some flour if too sticky.

Bread rolls: take from the total dough 20 pieces each of 40grams, work them with the palm of the hand in order to give the form of bread rolls; put them on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush them with olive oil and let fall over some cumin seeds; on the others make a little hole with the handle of a wooden spoon, and put in the center one walnut, one hazelnut, one olive, one teaspoon of pesto and so on.

Breadsticks: from the dough take 400 grams and divide it into 2 parts, mix the olives to the first dough, roll it and cut it into strips to form many sticks, that you have to twist and stretch. Same procedure with the Parmesan breadsticks.

Buns with raisin, braids with chilli peppers: take about 150 grams from the dough, mix it with raisins, and make bread rolls; roll out the remaining dough, sprinkle with chilli pepper, cut into strips of 3 and give the form of braid, then connect both ends.

Let stand the breads for 30’ and bake at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes, spraying a little water at the beginning of the cooking to make the bread more crusty.