The thirty-eighth Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge (from the book by the same name authored by Peter Reinhart) is Tuscan Bread, and is found on pages 259-260. I made a half portion of this bread, which was one small loaf, as I wasn't sure how well-received this was going to be minus the salt as there is no salt in this bread...and quite frankly, what is bread without salt in it? Apparently the Italians use this bread to serve with salty things so that is why there is no salt in it.
The ingredients: water, bread flour, instant yeast, and olive oil.
This is a two-day bread: fifteen minutes to make a paste on the first day, and another approximately five hours for the assembly, rising times, forming, and baking on the second day. I managed to again talk Margaret into baking it with me as it is always more enjoyable to be baking along with someone else, we were both skeptical at how this was going to taste with no salt, and frankly, we both agreed it was tasteless and we probably would not be making this one again unless we added salt to the recipe.
I served it with beef stew and it was nice enough with that, Mark enjoyed it that way, and then I also toasted in the oven and put a salty olive spread on top of it to see how that would work, and it did in fact work well, just the right amount of saltiness when you combined the salty olives with the bread in a bite, maybe the Italians do have something going there...leave the salt out of the bread and salt up the toppings!
You can visit the main group and marvel the breads. I'm getting there...Slow and Steady. Our next challenge: Vienna Bread found on pages 261-264.
