Kitchen of the Month for this wildest-yeastie adventure was Lien from NotitievanLien.  Lien has the recipe in English here.  The recipe you’ll find here will be the way I’d rewrite it.  I can only hope that’s not taking to much liberty.

I got bitten by this croc and more than once but in the end I made him eat his veggies and tamed his wet nature.

The recipe we’re using this month came from Carol Field’s classic book The Italian Baker.  The book came out in 1985 and is filled with stories, history and traditons of bread making.  She gives an excellent discussion of flours in Italy and America.  I read it early on but I think it had more meaning for me reading it again after all my wrestling with this crocodile!

The key points I got from it are:

1.   When this book was written, Italians were very envious of American flour.  Now, Europe can find the much sought after “Manitoba” flour (hard wheat grown in Manitoba and Montana).  That does leave me to wonder if she were writing the book today would she recommend an Italian using Manitoba or their more traditional flour.
   

2.   Don’t try to substitue Semolina (#1) for semolina flour -  she tells you not to, I made my first croc with it; it does not work, it dose not make bread.
   

3.   Do not substitue bread flour for the all purpose flour called for in the recipes in the book.  Lien pointed this out to our group.
   

4. The thing I liked best that she said was:  Please don’t let bread baking dictate your day.  There’s no problem with retarding a dough in a cool or refrigerated spot!
   

I think most of the group is going to lean toward saying the recipe failure or success is dependant upon what flour the baker has avilable and chooses to use.  I’m going to go out on a limb (over crocodile infested waters) and claim that differences in flour is only part of the show with this bread.  The flours I used did make a tremendous difference in the final product but I also found a huge difference in the behavior of the dough depending upon how I mixed the dough.  Hand vs machine.  I was able to get a nice looking loaf mixing by hand but be prepared for a long mixing.

I mixed this twice by hand.  The recipe gives directions for by hand but qualifies it by saying you will find it difficult to mix by hand (notice the word is mix and not knead) and that mixing by hand will take 30 minutes of continuous mixing.  I mixed this dough for at least 45 minutes, steady.  While I did see some gluten sheeting, I never got the dough to come together and pull away from the sides of the bowl when I did this by hand. 

Wrong flour, too much flour, poor technique . . . not a good result.  Had I not been baking this with the Babes, I might well have drawn a line down the recipe and never baked it again.

But, I was baking with the Babes and I did bake it again and again to the tune of five times total.

My best looking loaf was perhaps my second attempt.  I used #1 Semolina Durum flour and King Arthur’s Organic All Purpose flour and mixed it by hand.  Looked pretty, had almost no flavor.

Sheesh!  Finally, we get to the fifth loaf - loaves.

The recipe below is for this baking which used King Arthur durum flour, Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose (the info reads like all their flours are stone ground but is not specifically labeled that way on the all purpose) and a little King Arthur White Whole Wheat.

Coccodrillo: Cocodile Bread

adapted from The Italian Baker

by Carol Field

FIRST STARTER

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup (35 grams) King Arthur durum flour

3/4 cup (90 grams) Bob’s Red Mill unbleached stone-ground flour

Step One (this becomes first starter):

Stir yeast into water: let stand until dissolved about 10 minutes.

Add flours, stir with wooden spoon (about 50 strokes) or mixer about 30 seconds.  I stirred until this was almost smooth but not lump free.

Cover.

Let stand 12 to 24 hours.

Starter should be bubbly and sweet smelling.

SECOND STARTER

1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

11/4 cups water, room temperature

1/2 cup (70 grams) King Arthur durum flour

11/2 cups (180 grams) Bob’s Red Mill unbleached stone-ground flour

Step Two (added to the first starter, this becomes second starter):

Again dissolve yeast in water allow to stand about 10 minutes.

Add water, flours and dissolved yeast to the first starter.

Mix with a wooden spoon or the paddle of the electric mixer until smooth.  Again this was not lump free.

Cover with plastic wrap and let ferment another 12 to 24 hours.

DOUGH

1/4 cup (35 grams) King Arthur durum flour

1 to 1  1/4 cups (this measured 200 grams total) of the

two following flours:

•160g Bob’s Red Mill stone ground all purpose

•40 whole wheat flour

this is 60g more flour than the original recipe

18 grams salt

Step Three (the day to bake the bread)

Add the durum flour & the two flours to the starter in the mixer bowl; mix at low speed for 17 minutes.

Add salt at 17 minutes and increase speed to 2 to 4 (no more than half way). 

Within 40 seconds of adding the salt and increasing the mixer speed the dough came together and clear the sides of the bowl.

Stop the mixer: when the paddle is pulled out of the dough, it will cling and form sheets of dough and you may get a windowpane effect.

Pour the dough into the rising container and cover.  This will take between 4 and 5 hours for the dough to triple.  Turn the dough in the first two hours between 2 and 3 times.

FIRST RISE:

This is absolutely impossible to shape as well as turn.  I used one of these new plastic sheet cutting boards that are highly flexible.

Dust the flexible cutting board or parchment paper with flour and over the edges onto the counter incase the dough runs off the sheet.

To TURN the dough out of the rising container: tilt the container gently.  You will see a very strong gluten network.  You will watch the dough separate easily and fairly cleanly from the sides of the container if you don’t try to rush it.  Help it by using a flexible bench scrapper to get all the dough out.

Turn the dough by pouring it onto the flexible cutting board.  Pour about half the dough out in a length and then double back over that dough with the remaining half.  Use the bench scrapper to push the dough back onto the sheet.  Lift the sheet up and let it pour back into the rising container.

I turned the dough in the above manner twice: once at 45 minutes and at 90 minutes into the rise.

The dough was just nearly tripled in 5 hours.

SHAPING  (ha ha as if!)  Second Rise:

Start preheating the oven and baking stone to 475°F

POUR:   (while this is not water, it is very liquid and nothing like a traditional bread dough).

Cut two large pieces of parchment paper and over lap them about 2 inches.  Generously flour them.  Pour the dough onto the floured parchment aiming to get about half on each side of the separate papers.

Use bench scrappers to corral the dough into a rough oval.  Lien has a great video I hope she’s put on her site.

I cannot imagine covering this with anything that actually touches the surface of this dough and then separates successfully without deflating the dough by half as the cover is removed.  I have a large plastic box that I used to cover the dough.

BAKING:

The dough will have some air bubbles visible on the top but will not have risen dramatically.

To prepare the dough for the oven & baking:  use the bench scrapper to cut the dough down the middle.  If you were able to get the dough about evenly on the two pieces, the middle would be where the one piece of parchment overlaps onto the other.   With the bench scrappers, nudge the dough onto each piece of parchment.

I cut the paper into a rough shape around the dough.

STEAM:  I used a mister to spray water into the oven just before putting it in and then at 2 and 5 minutes after it went in the oven.

Slide the dough on the parchment paper into the hot oven and bake about 30 to 35 minutes.

Cool on a rack for at least 2 hours before tearing or cutting.

The loaves turn a rich golden brown and are rather bumpy much like a croc’s scaly skin.

The crust is crisp.  The crumb full of irregular size holes.

The whole wheat and the long times between the starters gives depth of flavor to this bread.

I encourage you to check the more original recipe here and compare it to mine above.  I think we all agreed the original 25g of salt was way to much.  I found 18g to be about the right amount for our tastes.

We have the name, we have the logo but we're not keeping it all to ourselves. No, any one of you can join if you like and make the recipe we feature, in the week following our posts. We'll be happy to follow your adventures and grant you a Baking Buddies Badge.

If you would like to become a Bread Baking Buddy with us, here’s how it works:

1.) you have one week from today to bake the bread.

2.) email The Kitchen of the month (this month: notitievanlien at gmail dot com or me, my email is just at the break between this post and the comments) with your name and the link to the post, or leave me a comment that you have baked the bread.

3.) post your "baking the bread" experience on your blog with a link to the Kitchen of the Month.

4.) The Kitchen of the Month will put up a list of our Bread Baking Buddies at her site and send you a neat BBB award for this bread that you can then add to your post on your blog.

C'mon, you know you want one of those badges, so cleverly designed by Lien! (thanks Lien, you're a gem!)

Hope to have you baking with us soon!