Italian bread

Pooky1 · ‎12-23-2015

I have an Italian bread recipe but I'm not crazy about it.anyone have a good Italian Bread recipe that's more like what you buy in the bakery that you would like to share?

gardenman · ‎03-09-2010

There's Italian bread and there's Italian bread. If you're talking about the round Italian boules like those from La Brea Bakery with a hard crust, then you'll want something like Bernard Clayton's "pain ordinaire careme." (That recipe is all over the Internet if you do a search.) It's a very good, go-to recipe for me. It's a bit weird in that you start with a batter you beat to death, unlike every other bread recipe I've ever tried, but it works.

If you're talking more about "Italian bread" in the soft crust, long, floppy loaves sold in supermarkets I'm not as much help as I don't really care for that and never make it myself. I prefer a crustier bread. King Arthur Flour (KAF) offers a few Italian bread recipes on their site.

I just made KAF's new "Everyday French Loaf" this past Saturday and it was very good. They have a YouTube video on that and the recipe is on their website. (Ignore the reviews. One person gave it two stars as being too complicated. It's not. It's a good basic bread with a not too crusty crust and a chewy interior. The video is a good guide if you have any questions.) I made it as two boules but they made it more as a tapered loaf. Mine came out very well. Is it as good as Bernard Clayton's pain ordinaire careme? Not for me, but it's pretty close. Probably the closest I've found to Bernard's bread which is the closest I've found to La Brea's.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!

cindyNC · ‎08-01-2019

I took a bread baking class once. We were taught that to get a hard, crusty outside, throw ice cubes in the bottom of your oven, or put them in a pan. The steam from the ice makes the outside crusty.

The recipes we used were from James Beard's book "Beard on Bread" I also had purchased a King Arthur Flour 25th Anniversary cookbook and it had one very basic bread recipe that you could use to make bread, pitas etc.....Unfortunately, my book is in storage.

Thanks for the tip about the Bernard Clayton book!