Altamura Bread

Altamura Bread is a traditional type of bread that comes from the city that has the same name. Altamura is located in the south part of Italy in Puglia. This type of bread has an unmistakable taste: it has a yellow colour, a crunchy crust and a soft breadcrumb. Altamura Bread is the first bread that in Europe is defined as DOP product that means denomination origin protected. One of the best properties of Altamura Bread is its durability; indeed traditionally it was prepared for the peasant that had to work for weeks in the fields. If you want to prepare it at home you should remember that the dough should be knead very well until it results completely homogeneous.

INGREDIENTS (for 600 g of bread):
500 g or 1 pound of durum flour
300 ml or 1 and ¼ cup of water
16 g or 0,56 ounces Powder yeast for bread
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of sugar

PREPARATION TIME: 20 minutes and 4 - 5 hours of rising

COOKING TIME: 20 - 30 minutes

PREPARATION
Put in a bowl the flour, the yeast, the salt and the sugar, mix them together.



Then little by little add the water and start to mix.



Don't add all the water immediately but time by time so in this way white your are working the dough and you feel it's consistency you can understand if the water is enough, too much or too less. You have to consider that the dough shouldn't be too dry but it should be a little bit humid and attach to your hands. Work the dough for at least 10 minutes to obtain a homogeneous and soft mixture. When you think that the dough is ready let stand it for rising in a bowl, make a cross in its surface



and cover with a wet towel. After more or less 3 - 4 hours the dough should be doubled. At this point work again the dough and prepare it to bake it. Put a sheet of baking paper on the baking pan, divide the dough in 2 round pieces, and make some incision with a knife on the surface and sprinkle abundantly with flour.



Let them rise again for 30 minutes 1 hour and then bake for 25 - 30 minutes at 250 C or 482 F. To check if the bread is ready you can use spaghetti, insert it at the centre of the bread, when you remove it if it is dry that mean that the bread is well cooked otherwise it needs some more minutes.





BUON APPETITO!

Strangolapreti

Strangolapreti means literally “priest strangler”. This is a traditional Italian recipe from the Northern part of Italy in particular Trentino Alto Adige and Friuli. Strangolapreti are a sort of dumpling made with spinach and bread instead to use flour or potatoes. Pay attention to not mix Strangolapreti with Strozzapreti, the translation is in both case “priest strangler” but Strozzapreti are mainly a kind of pasta made with water, flour and salt that you can find cooked in different way with different dressing and in same case also of different shape according to the different Italian region. Strangolapreti are easy and hard to prepare at the same time. Their preparation could be hard but if you follow some few and easy rules everything it will be very easy to prepare. When you dip the bread in the milk, crumble it and squeeze it very good. Do the same with the spinach: boil them, remove as much water of cooking as possible and mince them. Put all together with the eggs and parmesan, mix and at this point the mixture should be already ok, if it looks like a little bit to much soft add 2-3 spoons of flour but not more. If everything goes good in just 15 minutes the strangolapreti will be ready to cook. The cooking will take only few minutes because it’s enough to place them in the boiling water and in few minutes they will rise the surface. Drain them paying attention not to break them and sprinkle with butter, sage and a lot of Parmesan! BUON APPETITO!

INGREDIENTS (for 4 people):
400 g or 2 cup Spinach
4 Bread rolls
Milk (enough to dip the bread)
2 Eggs
2-3 Spoons of flour
Parmesan
Butter
Salt
Pepper
8 Leafs of sage

PREPARATION TIME: 20 minutes

COOKING TIME: 20 minutes

WINE: Pinot Grigio (White Wine)

PREPARATION
Let the salted water boiled for strangolapreti. Clean and wash the spinach let them boil for about 10 minutes or until they are cooked. Drain the spinach and remove as much water of cooking as possible, let them cool down in a bowl and mince them. In another bowl dip the bread rolls and crumbled them. Now add the bread to the spinach together with the eggs, Parmesan, salt, black pepper.



Mix all the ingredient together, you will obtain a soft dough that you should be able to knead with two spoon, if this is not possible just add a little bit of flour but not too much; the dough shouldn’t be too firm.



Prepare the dressing: place in a pan the butter with the leaves of sage and let it melt.



When the water boils with the help of two spoons make a sort of balls as shown in this picture





and place them into the water. When strangolapreti rise to the surface are ready.



Drain strangolapreti one by one or few by few with the help of a skimmer in order to not break them. Serve hot with the dressing of butter and sage and sprinkle with Parmesan.






BUON APPETITO!

Italian Bread

The bread is always present in the Italian cooking and it is a typical Italian ingredients. In Italy there is hundred kinds of bread such as the bread with milk, the bread with oil, the bread of Altamura, the Sicilian bread, the Apulian bread, the Neapolitan bread, the Tuscan bread and many other. Each region in Italy has a typical kind of bread and each kinds of bread have a specific and typical recipe. Make bread at home is not hard. You need few and good ingredients such as flour, salt, sugar, extra virgin olive oil, yeast and water in order to make delicious and warm bread that you can eat immediately. Here is describes a simple recipe in order to make home bread with the help of the bread machine but if you want you can follow this recipe and knead the ingredients with hand. The time and the passage are the same. You can eat bread simply with a drizzle of oil, with a second course or you can use it as an ingredient of many Italian recipes.

INGREDIENTS (for 1 Kg of bread):
330 g of white flour
330 g of American or Canadian Flour (Manitoba flour)
330 g of Organic semolina flour (semola di grano duro)
25 g of Yeast
500 – 600 ml of water
3 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 Teaspoon of sugar
2 Teaspoon of salt

PREPARATION TIME: 10 minutes

COOKING TIME: 3 hours

PREPARATION
Place in a bowl the three different kinds of flours, the salt, the sugar and mix all together.

Dissolve the yeast in some warm water.


When the yeast is dissolved place the solution in the container of the bread machine and add in it the extra virgin olive oil. Add the flour and mix with the help of a tablespoon.


Then put the container inside the bread machine and let it knead and rise for about 1 hour and 30 minutes. The bread machine has different kinds of program: I usually use this.



At the end of the time, preheat the oven to 50° C, cover with a sheet of baking paper a baking pan, take out the dough and divide it into two parts without knead it. Make the shape of two long loafs and place them on the baking pan.



Turn off the oven and put in it the bread in order to let it rise for another 30 minutes. The loaf might double. Then turn on the oven to 180° C and cook the bread for about 30 – 40 minutes, until the surface becomes golden.
This is the result:

BUON APPETITO!