Talk about a young girl that can really cook!
Annarita is our cousin from Italy - she lives in the area Aggie's Mom was from - the Acerra, Italy region. We first met her when she was about 10 years old and we went to Acerra and had a family reunion on a rooftop! This was her with all the cousin's children - when we met her....
My family in Chicago was so blessed when her and her boyfriend Arturo visited this summer and stayed with Aggie's Mom. Everyone was treated to her cooking - and truly enjoyed her recipes - of which she has many.
Here is her recipes for Bread and Pizza Dough accordingly.
Bread Dough Ingredients
- 2.2 pounds of flour - 1/2 a 0 type of flour (Zero flour refers to the grade of flour and how fine it is ground.) and 1/2 type 1 flour
- 2.5 cups of water
- 6 teaspoons of salt
- 1 tablespoon of dry yeast
We will be featuring some great zero type flours in December when the arrive and we are so excited!
Directions: Use a Stand mixer with a dough hook.
Mix for one minute half the flour with about 10 ounces of the water. Cover it with a cloth and wait one hour.
Then add the rest of the flour and the yeast and the remaining water, but slowly, a little bit at a time. Put the stand mixer to 1 speed for 10 minutes of kneading and then a higher speed for 8 minutes. Then add the salt and mix for 2 more minutes.
The dough has to rest about a half hour covered by a cloth.
After that put the dough on a work surface with a little bit of semolina flour and wet your hands a little bit to shape the dough.
You should be folding the dough in half - see video on our Instagram and Facebook posts of this recipe.
Wait about a half hour and do this about 6 times waiting a half hour from the previous session. This is truly a labor of love. At the end you need to shape the dough and place in a bread bowl or basket - we have those on Season and Stir!
Put a little semolina flour over the top.
Cover with a cloth and wait about an hour.
Then place in the refrigerator overnight. The next day cook it in a Dutch oven that has been prewarmed for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Take the bread from the refrigerator and place on parchment paper to make some cuts with your bread scorer - we have a great bread scoring kit on the seasonandstir.com that you can use to make really artistic cuts in your dough.
Take the Dutch oven out of the prewarmed oven and place the bread in the Dutch oven and cook it for 30 minutes covered and the last 30 minutes uncovered - so a total of an hour oven time.
This is the ingredients for the pizza flour:
- 1 pound 2 ounces of 0 flour - Zero flour refers to the grade of flour and how fine it is ground.
- 1 3/4 cup of water
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 4 teaspoons of oil
- 1 teaspoon of brewer's yeast
We hope Annarita will share more recipes from that region of Italy soon!