Book Review The Italian Baker by Carole Field Recipe

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• The Italian Baker by Carol Field, shopping list
• Harper Collins Publishers, Copyright 1985 $32.50 shopping list
• This sumptuous book is such a celebration of Italian baking at its best. It is not filled with pictures from cover to cover (as I’d love a book to be) but the cover shot alone shows a sampling of what is within the pages. shopping list
• A wonderful book that takes you all around the Italian home bakery. Aside from great breads of all types, biscotti, tarts, there is also techniques for working with yeast, hand-drawings that show the shaping of the breads and more. There are 5 soups in the 1985 edition that I have and the Ribollita (Tuscan Bean Soup) is worth getting the book! It has cannellini beans, kale, savoy cabbage, and no meat but it is a hearty, and very good for you soup that captures the more rustic style of Italian cooking. shopping list
• There are so many unique breads in here that capture the true, great art of baking and so much more! shopping list
• She talks extensively about all the equipment you’ll need to bake perfect loaves and also talks about what she calls: a scale, a dough scraper and a baking stone. She gives appendixes to buy all the cooking equipment she mentions throughout the book as well. shopping list
• I have never baked bread with a baking stone YET but after reading how nice the Italian breads come out using one I might invest in one. shopping list
• I didn’t know how amazing silicone was to bake with until I did a search on the internet to find out what the state of the art was in bake ware today. shopping list
• “If you are new to baking, start with on of the vegetable or herb breads, like the Pesto Bread, the sweet pepper or rosemary Bread.; try the focacce, the grissini, or any of the whole-grain breads. You can also try the rolls-both savory and sweet-that are a vital part of the social life in this most social of all countries. Try the maritozze or the spinach Rolls or the ciambelle with oil and salt. These breads are straightforward and uncomplicated, and the proportion of flou to water makes them easy to mix and knead. shopping list
• The big regional breads with chewy, porous interiors tend to be more difficult to prepare, because they are made with starters and because the doughs are uncommonly moist, which takes some getting used to. Italian bakers toss great blobs of them onto the worktable and shape them with ease, but I have to admit to fantasies of someone plunging in to knead or shape one of those wet doughs, only to find herself trapped in great sticky masses and having to wait for a friend to come by and rescue her. Actually there is nothing tricky about these doughs as long as you are psychologically and physically prepared with a mound of flour nearby for your work surface, your hands, and even your tools. These wet doughs may sound somewhat formidable, but they make spectacular breads. They are survivors of a rustic tradition that remains alive in pockets of Italy today, and they more than repay in taste what they demand in effort. Often all it takes is an extra tablespoon or two of flour to bring an unmanageably soft dough under control. shopping list
• Other difficult doughs tend to demand more time than anything else. The addition of butter, which coats the gluten strands of the sweet doughs, slows down the rises, as do the fruit and nut fillings, handfuls of cheese, and chunks of salami. Make sure you’ve allowed for the hours that the rises will take and the extra few minutes that rolling in the fillings demand. Follow the instructions carefully, and you won’t have any problems. shopping list
• Most of the recipes in this book are traditional or variations on the traditional. But what makes this a spirited romp in the fields of the baker is the fact that tradition is constantly being modified by the creative instincts of the very bakers who dreamed up the variations in the first place. More times than I’d like to count, I’ve gone back to a bakery, drawn by memories of a wonderful bread only to discover that they’re making it slightly differently. Someone’s fantasia has added a little durum flour or shaped it into a braid or an extravagant big wheel. These bakers start with flour, water, yeast, and salt, but by the time they’re finished, they’ve added color, fragrance, new flavors and aromas, and dusted a surface with a handful of fresh herbs or tiny crunchy seeds. So while you must follow the recipes and learn from the baker’s techniques, once you’ve conquered the technique you may decide to follow their lead and invent your own variations. You might make a long, thin baguette of the pugliese dough or put salty olives in one of the salt-free doughs, add herbs from your garden or a bit of marsala or rum to a lightly sweetened dough.” shopping list
• A recipe for you from The Italian Baker by Carol Fields: shopping list
• This is in the words of Carol Fields herself: shopping list
• “These days, simple is sophisticated and rustic is chic. All over Tuscany, trattorie are full of the most delicious peasant soups, which were initially created from simple necessity. Some say that ribolleta was made from the bread that was used as a trencher for roasts in hungry servants, who put it in a big pot of water with vegetables and prepared in the country on a Friday; therefore it is meatless and doesn’t even have the hint of a prosciutto bone or a bit of pancetta. It is made of the most basic ingredients-bread, potatoes, kale, a few handfuls of cabbage. When it was ribollita, or reboiled, it turned up again at lunch on Saturday as a wonderful leftover that has now become a staple soup of the region. Nowadays most ribollite in Tuscany are tasty vegetable soups made with Tuscan beans, a civilized bit of cuisine created from rougher beginnings.” shopping list
• Makes 6 servings. shopping list
• 8 ounces (225 grams) dried white cannellini beans or 1-½ cups canned cannelloni shopping list
• ¾ cup olive oil shopping list
• 2 medium-size yellow onions, finely chopped shopping list
• 3 ribs celery, diced shopping list
• 4 carrots, peeled and chopped shopping list
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste shopping list
• 2 teaspoons warm water shopping list
• 3 ripe medium-sized tomatoes, chopped shopping list
• 3 bunches swiss chard (about 3 pounds or 1-½ kilograms), stems trimmed, leaved chopped shopping list
• 1 bunch kale, stems trimmed, leaves removed shopping list
• ½ savoy cabbage, finely shredded shopping list
• 4 medium-size potatoes, peeled and chopped shopping list
• 1 fresh small chile, seeded and chopped shopping list
• 2 cloves garlic, minced shopping list
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried shopping list
• salt shopping list
• Freshly ground pepper shopping list
• 5 to 6 cups cold water shopping list
• 12 to 16 slices stale Pane Toscano Scuro (Dark Tuscan bread, page 112) or shopping list
• Pane Toscano (page 110) shopping list
• Best-quality Tuscan olive oil for garnish shopping list
• If you are using dried beans, soak the beans overnight in water to cover, then drain. Heat the beans and fresh water to cover over high heat to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered until tender, about 1-½ hours. Drain the beans but reserve the cooking liquid. Puree three quarters of the cooked beans with a little bit of the cooking liquid or three quarters of the canned beans in a little of their liquid in a food processor fitted with the steel blade or in a blender. Reserve the remaining whole beans. shopping list
• Heat ½ cup oil in a heavy large pan or Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add the onions, celery, and carrots and saute until the onions are soft, about 5 minutes. Thin the tomato paste with the 2 teaspoons water and add the thinned paste and the fresh tomatoes to the vegetables. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in the chard, kale, cabbage, potatoes, pureed and whole beans, the chile, garlic, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. Add the remaining bean cooking or canned liquid and enough of the cold water to cover the vegetables. Heat to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer covered about 2 hours. shopping list
• Just before serving, grill or toast 2 slices of bread for every serving. You can saute the bread in the remaining ¼ cup oil, or brush one side of each slice with the oil and bake on a baking sheet at 400 degrees F. until golden, or brush the bread with oil and grill under a broiler or over an open fire. Place the bread in the bottom of wide soup bowls and ladle the soup over the bread. Drizzle a fine thread or two of good Tuscan olive oil over each serving. Most Tuscans so not serve parmesan cheese with this bean soup. shopping list