Mediterranean Semolina Bread
I signed up to play in Taste in Create V, a fun idea created by Nicole of
For The Love of Food. She partners the bloggers who have signed up, each must tiptoe through the other's blog entries and recipes and find an interesting dish, cook it and blog about it. I was lucky enough to be paired with Laurie of Mediterranean Cooking In Alaska, a blog I've had my eye on for some time. Her premise is fascinating - she is Greek, and keeps a house in both Greece and Alaska, cooking traditional Greek foods with the local ingredients she finds in Alaska. I can hardly imagine two more diverse places to live and cook, and the local cuisines couldn't be more different. Her recipes are amazing, with beautiful pictures that make me ache to visit Greece to experience the food firsthand. So after happily reading page after page of mouth-wateringly delicious looking cuisine, I settled on her Olive Oil Bread. Round and golden with a star shape cut into the top, I knew this was my recipe.
As I kneaded the dough, I could tell that this was going to be a lovely bread. The dough was silky and soft, the perfect consistency. It contains semolina flour, which I had never baked with, but it really gives the loaf a nice creamy texture. When the finished bread came out of the oven, I wasn't disappointed. The bread was a large, beautiful loaf, with a crisp, crunchy crust. The interior had a lovely tight texture, rather like a white bread you might buy at the store. And the taste was distinctive and unusual - the semolina gave it the flavor of corn meal, but without the rough bite. A wonderful bread by all accounts. And a surprising bonus, it keeps beautifully. Living here in Colorado, the air tends to be a tad dry. Bread is rarely edible after the first day you bake it - so the birds in my yard are quite well fed. But this loaf stayed fresh and moist for four or five days, as we enjoyed it with breakfast, spread with peanut butter and as toast. Yum! Thanks Laurie for a great recipe - I'll be baking this often!
This is Laurie's Recipe - I copied it off of her blog. I think the directions for preheating the stone help to give this bread it's wonderful crust, and will be baking all of my breads this way in the future. As I side note, I didn't add the rosemary when I made this. I love rosemary in bread, I just like my peanut butter sandwiches better without it.
Rosemary Bread (Ψωμί με Δενδρολίβανο)
Makes one large loaf
I prefer using a baking stone when I make bread as it helps my home oven maintain an even temperature and gives bread a crisper crust. I also have an old baking sheet with edges that I use when I make bread. I preheat the baking sheet and baking stone for at least 30 minutes at 500°F. I turn the heat down to 450°F when I put the bread in to bake. Just before I close the oven, I dump a cup of water into the baking sheet and quickly shut the door. (Do not throw water directly on the oven floor or it will warp. Trust me, I know this from experience.) The water creates steam which prevents the bread from quickly forming a hard surface, thus allowing the bread to rise to its fullest extent. The water cooks off quickly, and leaves a hot, dry oven which, together with the baking stone, helps ensure a crispy crust.
2 cups warm water
1 Tbsp. honey
2 1/4 tsp. dry yeast (1 packet)
2 Tbsp. minced rosemary
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cups semolina flour
2 – 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Coarse salt
In a large bowl, mix the warm water and honey. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let it sit for 10 minutes, or until the yeast begins to foam. Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment (or by hand with a wooden spoon), mix in the rosemary, salt, olive oil, and semolina flour. Let sit for 10 minutes (this is necessary to properly hydrate the semolina).
Start mixing in the all-purpose flour. When the dough starts clumping together, switch to the dough hook (or to kneading by hand), and keep adding all-purpose flour until you have a moist, but not quite sticky, dough. Flour a board or counter, dump out the dough, and knead in the remaining flour as needed to make a smooth, soft dough.
Let the dough rise for 1 hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. Punch down the dough, shape into a large round loaf, place on a parchment-paper-lined rimless baking sheet, and let rise until the loaf has almost doubled in size. (You can also rise the bread directly on a wooden peel sprinkled with semolina flour or corn meal.)
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Cut an asterisk in the center of the loaf with a razor blade or extremely sharp knife. Brush lightly with water and sprinkle with coarse salt. (If you have a baking stone, slide the bread - and parchment paper if using - from the baking sheet or wooden peel onto the stone.) Bake for 15 minutes. Without removing the bread from the oven, turn the heat down to 325°F and bake for an additional 20 - 25 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
