Each week I will be trying new recipes and if I don't have time to immediately update you all on how they went, I will do my best to do a weekly recipe recap on the weekend. So here we go...
On Monday I posted about Tweaking Sullivan Street Bakery Recipes but never gave you guys the results. Got too busy getting ready for The Martha Stewart Show!!
- The folding of the edges several times during the rise worked well in bringing in more air bubbles.
- After 15 or so hours of rising I had a nice dome under the tea towel covering the dough.
- While I had the dough rising all day in a warm spot in our house, the chill overnight did some damage to the rise and air bubble factor. When I came down Tuesday morning it had clearly lost lots of its umph and all of its dome. Grr.
- I preheated the oven to 500 degrees with the cast iron skillet on the bottom rack. Just after I slid the bread on the upper rack, I poured water into the hot hot skillet creating steam and quickly closed the oven door. I then turned the oven temp down to 450. I set the preheat temp to 500 because I knew the door would be open for a bit while I was pouring the water into the skillet and didn't want to lose too much heat in that process.
- THE RESULTS: The crust was lighter and crispier than previous attempts and the interior definitely had more holes. However, it was still too dense in my opinion so I am going to keep trying.
The Roman Gnocchi Experiment
I am happy to report that the recipe I posted in 24 hours in Manhattan: a food & fun recap is a good one! I have tried it twice since yesterday and it turns out nice semolina gnocchi, which IMO are hardly gnocchi because they were too easy! Here are my thoughts:
- The first batch I tried in a baking dish and they didn't brown all that well and took much longer in the oven than the recipe called for.
- For the second batch (pictured), I decided to up the temp to 450 and I preheated my cast iron skillet so I could get a good bottom crust on these guys. Once the oven was preheated I took the skillet out, quickly doused it with olive oil and then slide the round "gnocchi" into the pan.
- I returned the pan to the oven on the middle rack for about 15 minutes. I then put the pan on the bottom rack for about 5 minutes to get the bottoms good and browned, and then cranked the broiler to brown the tops.
- THE RESULTS: A crispy top and bottom with a wonderfully creamy center. YUM!
- I served it for lunch to the kids with some red sauce and they gobbled it up.
