Sunday, June 14, 2009

BBA Challenge: Casatiello

This week's bread was Casatiello, and let me tell you: I might have a new favorite bread! PR calls it "dreamy," and I would definitely have to agree! The thing is, I was really hesitant about making this bread, skeptical that salami in bread would be very good...but believe me, it was more than good! That's one of my favorite things about the BBA challenge: it inspires me to make breads that I would probably never otherwise attempt, but that turn out to be delicious.

This bread is basically a brioche with cheddar cheese and soppressata salami added after kneading. It bakes up to be an incredibly flaky, buttery, and flavorful bread. It's definitely best warm, maybe 20 minutes out of the oven, at which time it sort of tastes like pizza in bread form. It's also very tasty once the bread has cooled off, or toasted. It needs no accompianment, and is excellent just sliced and plain with no toppings.

Here's a photo of the sponge:

The soppressata is lightly sauteed to bring out even more flavor.


Here's the mise-en-place, ready to be mixed into the sponge: dry ingredients, egg, butter, cheese, and salami.

This is what the dough looks like after adding the extra flour:



After adding all that butter, things get much messier! But keep kneading and everything comes together without adding any more flour.

Here's the kneaded dough with the cheese and soppressata added, ready to rise.

These minis only had cheese (no meat) for vegetarians.


The larger loaf had the meat and cheese. So pretty!

11 comments:

  1. I was surprised at how good the casatiello turned out! I am not big on salami and didn't have any bacon so I subbed roasted red peppers. Pete r Reinhart was right, it really did taste like a sandwich all wrapped up in one loaf of bread!

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  2. Great looking bread and YES it is a recipe I think many of us will try again.
    :)
    Nice baking along with you,
    Susie

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  3. I agree with you. My favourite so far too! I did mine with olives but red pepper sounds fantastic. I'm adding those next time. Your mini ones were adorable.

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  4. Sara, this bread look so delicious.

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  5. Wonderful looking bread! I'll have to try this soon, and I get the feeling my husband won't mind if I make it quite often :)

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  6. I am loving your step by step pics here! It looks delicious!

    Great blog! Will follow! :)

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  7. The minis look so cute! I'm making mine this week... I was going to use provolone, but I may try a sharp cheddar since yours sound so tasty...

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  8. Ohhh you put salami in it! The bread looks soo good.

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  9. Yum! I must make this bread! Salami and cheddar cheese? Mmmm. Yours look like they came out just perfect!

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  10. Yay for the veggie mini rolls. I used veggie Chorizo (the harder Spanish kind) and we could not keep our greasy paws away from it.

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