briciole

pane di Pasqua bulgaro / Bulgarian Easter bread

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] my (non-traditional) version of kozunak It comes out of the oven looking beautiful and smelling delicately sweet. However, an inviting appearance must translate into the right combination of crust and crumb. In this case, a thin, crisp crust made crunchy by poppy seeds and a soft crumb tasting lightly of eggs enriched by the bold flavor and texture of raisins and walnuts — all in balance. The proof is in the cutting and the tasting. The blade chooses a place where to sink its teeth and a delicate sawing motion brings it... Read more →

pita

pita stuffed with Crescenza cheese The country we are currently visiting in our virtual European Community tour is Greece (Grecia). And this time I can say: I've been there! I shared images and impressions from my recent visit to the island of Samos in these posts: postcard from Samos enigma wine barrels To celebrate our stop, I made pita, the popular flatbread. I had made pita before, when it was featured as a Daring Cooks challenge some time ago. Last November, we made pita during the workshop I attended at the San Francisco Baking Institute and the experience made me put... Read more →

mollica e crosta / crumb and crust

look at this crumb! It was hard to take photos during the bread-baking class at the San Francisco Baking Institute I attended last week. I was always focused on the task at hand and my hands were usually not in the ideal conditions to pick up the camera. The quiter moment came at the end of each day, when we tasted our bread production. We mostly made baguettes using different methods and then evaluated the pros and cons of each in terms of look, smell and flavor. The photo above shows the beautiful crumb on a couple of baguettes made by... Read more →

pane di Pasqua lituano / Lithuanian Easter bread

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] the final rendition Easter breads across Europe feature eggs (uova), probably the food most revered this time of the year. When I was a little girl, my aunt Lucia explained to me that hens laying eggs again after the sluggish winter months was cause for celebration. I agreed. Yesterday, I saw several farmers selling eggs at the market, each having a nice pile of cartons on their table, a sign that the winter dearth of eggs is over. As an avid egg consumer, I find myself with a lot of egg shells.... Read more →

rohlíky: panini cechi / Czech bread rolls

impossible not to eat one — or two Another European country — another bread. Our virtual tour of the EU has reached the Czech Republic and to honor it, I baked a beloved traditional bread roll called rohlík (plural: rohlíky, as Káta kindly told me). When I read expatriates wax poetic about a bread, I want to bake it. This has happened recently with the Maltese bread called ftira and now with rohlík. Trust the expats: they know what it means to miss a food they love. In reading about rohlík, I immediately learned that it is the Czech version of... Read more →

ftira: pane maltese / Maltese bread

a really good bread The sky always shone blue and cloudless. The sea was of a blue so intense it was impossible not to want to dive into it. I was on the island of Malta to study English and enjoy a vacation after over a year of working full time as a nurse and studying at a university full time. I was having a great time. Going to Malta for my first study vacation (vacanza studio) was an excellent choice. We had language classes morning and afternoon. In October, the temperature was still mild and the sun welcoming, so we... Read more →

pane alla zucca con siero di latte / winter squash and whey bread

a beautiful bread As I was taking my seat at the Zellerbach Playhouse in Berkeley, one October evening in 2005, the man next to me warned me about the play that would soon start: “It’s all in Italian.” I thanked him with a smile and confessed I spoke the language. In fact, I had seen the same rendition of the play, Arlecchino servitore di due padroni (Servant of Two Masters), some years prior, when I was still living in Milan and could not miss the opportunity to enjoy it again. Supertitles helped the audience navigate the fast dialog spoken not only... Read more →

pane d'orzo estone / Estonian soda bread

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] stone-ground barley flour Do you remember being told as a kid not to play with your food? I do. Back then, I played with foods I did not like: I had this idea that if I moved it around my plate long enough it would consume itself by friction and disappear. I was never allowed the time needed to prove the correctness of my theory. Now I "play" with food in a completely different way. I match ingredients following some intuition that the marriage will work, I learn techniques that challenge my... Read more →

Panissimo: il riepilogo / the roundup

It was a great pleasure for me to host the October edition of Panissimo, the monthly bread-baking event that is the brainchild of Barbara of Bread & Companatico and Sandra of Indovina chi viene a cena? (Guess who's coming to dinner?). Bloggers from many countries (and speaking various languages) share a passion for the art and science of baking bread and here are the results of their most recent efforts. Get that translator going and enjoy! È stato un grande piacere per me ospitare l'edizione di Ottobre di Panissimo, evento mensile di panificazione creato da Barbara di Bread & Companatico e... Read more →

treccia di pane con uvetta e noci / raisin walnut braided bread

patterned slices are a pleasure to savor There is such a thing as falling in love (innamorarsi) with a recipe at first sight. The moment I saw a photo of Cranberry orange braided bread on the King Arthur Flour's catalog, I knew that my version of it would soon come out of the oven. Besides being the kind of bread I sometimes like to bake, it was exactly what I was looking for to go with the book I had just finished reading: the Outcast by Jolina Petersheim. I was very intrigued by the description of the novel as a modern... Read more →