Fifteen breads down, twenty-eight to go…
Once more I should say that all recipes from the challenge can be found here, a must-have book for any serious (or beginner) bread baker.
Reinhart’s Italian Bread is quite similar to the previous one (French Bread), except that it takes a “biga” instead of a “poolish”. No need to run away all scared, those are terms to describe the pre-mixture of flour, water, and yeast, that generally ferments for 24 hours before being used in the final dough. Usually a “biga” is firmer (contains less water).
For this bread, I changed the method of kneading. Instead of adding the dough to the Kitchen Aid and watching the machine do its job, I kneaded it myself, but used my favorite method: folding. I put the advice from bakers over at “The Fresh Loaf” to work, folding the dough twice, at 40 and 80 minutes, then forming a “boule” at 120 minutes. One more hour rising, and into the oven it went. These pictures show the second folding (made in two directions), and the “boule” right after shaping. Notice how bubbly it was, even before the final rise.
After 1 hour at room temperature, the dough rose about 1.5X of its original size, as expected. It had a spongy texture, airy and light. It lost some of it when I dumped it into my clay pot, but not much. It had good enough oven spring to recover.
This bread is spectacular, the crumb has excellent texture, the crust is not too hard, not too soft, just right. As my husband put it, “it is not very easy to stop eating it”. Indeed. It was a wise decision to make half the recipe, because there is only so much running one can do. đŸ˜‰
A final shot of the crumb…
Bewitching Kitchen 
Oh Sally, it’s beautiful as always!
You could decide to make full recipe, wrap the 2nd loaf tightly in foil, put that package into a ziplock, and freeze for later. I do that a lot.
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Thanks, Amy…
You have no idea how much bread we already have sleeping in the freezer đŸ™‚
and to think that Kaiser Rolls are next …. I will need to start a run around the planet!
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You need to open a bakery! Beautiful.
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Yup, you could sell that stuff. I’ll bet you could even bake cakes.
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Jean, let’s not get too excited! I know my limitations…. đŸ™‚
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Oooh, you’re making me hungry.
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Absolutely beautiful! I haven’t made this bread yet, but I’m really excited. Everyone keeps talking about how good it is.
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I am sure yours will be awesome! Looking forward to your blog entry about it!
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Beautiful crumb. Between this post and the Kaiser roll post, I’m going to try the folding method on future breads.
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Gorgeous! I loved this recipe! My affair with flour yeast and water is out of control! Your pics and folding technique make me want to make it again!
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I can’t find the usual offered recipe that is for the Italian bread?
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Hi, Gail – sorry I cannot give the recipe because this was part of a “bake the whole book” project, and we made a commitment to Peter Reinhart to not publish any of the recipes from the book… You might be able to find it with a google search, though, but the best option is to buy the book, it’s such a classic!
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I own that book-:) bought for those long, narrow flat bread sticks.Happy to open it and read again
Thanks for the reply
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My pleasure!
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