Susan: Italian Breads From Local Breads - Black Olive Cheeks (Puccia)

If your bakery cafe has 500 locations scattered around the country, launching any new product is a complicated endeavor. First there's the research and development stage, which in many cases can last as long as a year. Creating something that is not only tasty, visually appealing, and on budget, but that can also be easily and exactly replicated around the country — or even the world — is no small feat. Then there are the amazingly expensive, in-store and out-of-store publicity/marketing/advertising campaigns needed to spread the word about your delicious new invention.

If, however, your bakery cafe has only one location, one oven, and one baker, introducing a new item is as easy as flipping through a cookbook, pointing to a recipe and saying, "That looks good!"; baking it up; and sticking the results in your display case next to a handwritten sign stating what it is. Years ago when I had a little bakery cafe in northern California, that's exactly what I used to do.

One of the nicest things about opening a small eatery several miles from any other place folks could buy a cup of coffee or, even better, a still warm chocolate chip cookie and a latté made from freshly roasted coffee beans, is that you quickly develop a band of very loyal customers. And although some of them happily ordered the same thing day in and day out, I was fortunate to have a share of eager guinea pigs. These adventurous folks were always willing to try something new and different, no matter what it might be. Some of my experiments, such as the pistachio olive quick bread, never made it onto the permanent menu (or even into the oven a second time), others, like the pesto piezones, were instant bestsellers. This ongoing creative challenge was one of the most enjoyable parts of the job.

Shaping Rolls

I once knew a guy who had worked as a cook in a restaurant famous for its five different types of homemade rolls. I said something about what a pain it must have been to shape all those little pieces of dough, and he said it wasn't hard at all. "I'd just tear off pieces and throw them in the pan," he said, using hand gestures and sound effects to demonstrate his technical prowess. "I could make about 60 rolls a minute."

The nice thing about homemade rolls is that they, obviously, don't have to each be perfectly formed. I'm not a real stickler for perfection, but I do like my rolls to look nice, so my method takes a little more time than one second per roll. If I want to be sure they're all the same size, I simply plunk a few down on my digital kitchen scale to gauge how I'm doing.

There are many ways to shape rolls. Basically whatever works best for you is the best way to do it. I use the same technique as I do for making large rounds. I hold up the hunk of dough and pull pieces of it underneath the ball, pinching them so that a taut "skin" is formed. Then I set it down on the counter, cup both hands around it, and turn it in a few tight circles while lightly pressing it into the counter so the ball is pulled into shape.

Since describing things in three-dimension is clearly not one of my strong points (can anyone actually follow what I just described?), here's the method for making rolls in Local Breads:

The technique for shaping small round rolls is similar to the technique for shaping a larger round. Place a small piece of dough on an unfloured work surface. cup one hand slightly and cover the dough ball with it. Rotate your hand in small circles, applying a little pressure to the dough. As you rotate, the dough will eventually form into a ball.

Rustic rolls may also be formed simply by flattening a larger piece of dough to a 2-inch thickness. Use a bench scraper or chef's knife to cut 2-inch-wide strips. Cut each strip into squares or rectangles.

I haven't been trying many new bread recipes lately, because I've been focusing on refining the five or six breads that will be the mainstay of the small wholesale bread bakery we're building here on the farm. But the other day I had an enlightening realization. When it comes to offering additional items for sale, things won't be much different than they were at the cafe. Testing out a new type of bread will simply be a matter of finding a recipe that sounds interesting, baking a few dozen loaves, loading them into the delivery truck, and seeing if our wholesale customers want to offer them to their customers. If the response is positive, we bake more. If not, there's no big loss.

That was all the excuse I needed to start baking new breads. Add with the publication of my new favorite bread book, Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers, by Daniel Leader (renowned baker and author of my previously favorite bread book, Bread Alone), and my priorities around the farm have suddenly shifted. Weed-filled garden, piles of dirty laundry, ravenous baby chicks, and scorching summer heat be damned — I'm on a bread baking roll.

We're devoting this month at A Year in Bread to Daniel's latest book. Because we haven't tackled sourdoughs here yet, we decided we would each bake a bread from the Italian section as they most often begin with a biga, which can be made in several hours, as opposed to sourdough starters which take several days to create from scratch. After you mix up the biga and let it sit for an hour at room temperature, it goes into the fridge for at least eight and up to 16 hours, so it's not hard to make this recipe fit your schedule.

This is the second recipe I've tried from Local Breads, and both of them were easy to make and are definite keepers, the first article was on "Parisian Daily Bread". The book, which I highly recommend for bread bakers of all levels including total beginners, will be available in stores on August 13th. You can pre-order copies now at Amazon.com for $23.10, which is 34 percent off the cover price of $35.00, plus there's no tax and free shipping on orders of $25 or more.

We're also going to be holding a contest here at A Year In Bread and giving away two signed copies of Local Breads to lucky and skilled bakers! More details will be posted soon.

I have to admit the cute name of these tasty little rolls is what first caught my attention. With the discovery that they're made with those strong and salty oil-cured olives I love so much and Daniel's introduction, I was hooked. He says:

Plump with olives, smooth and round, these rolls look just like puccia, little cheeks. I first saw them in Lucca, a walled city in Tuscany famous for its superior olive oil. I arrived by train, and when I left the station in search of food, these rolls beckoned from the only bakery I found open during the midday lull. They were the perfect snack for a hungry traveler, moist and tender with the delectable crunch of cornmeal on the bottom crust. Dark, oil-cured olives give these rolls richness and great flavor. . . Serve the puccia as an antipasto, with some pecorino cheese and a glass of Chianti.

I also almost never eat crusty breads plain or without reheating them, but I found myself nibbling on these straight from the bag on the counter. They're delicious reheated and slathered with butter, too, and make scrumptious mini sharp cheddar & homegrown lamb salami sandwiches. When I tasted the first one still warm from the oven, my immediate thought was that it would be wonderful with a glass of red wine. Yep.

As with nearly all breads, these rolls freeze beautifully. I pulled out a couple this morning, and for lunch I sliced them in half, toasted them in my beloved toaster oven, and covered them with cream cheese and slices of juicy garden tomatoes. Oh. My. God. If you can keep from gobbling them all up plain, black olive cheeks have all kinds of possibilities. Next time I'm going to make a few larger ones for lamb burger buns.

Black Olive Cheeks (Puccia)
This is the original recipe from Local Breads in its entirety, with my baking notes [in brackets.]

Allow 9 to 16 hours to mix and ferment the biga;
10 to 15 minutes to knead;
1-1/2 to 2 hours to ferment;
45 minutes to 1 hour to proof;
20 to 25 minutes to bake

Makes 20 rolls (2.1 ounces/60 grams each)

Equipment
2 baking sheets
bench scraper or chef's knife

Biga
Ingredients | US volume | metric volume | US weight | metric weight
water tepid (70 - 78F/21-26C) 1/3 c | 80 ml | 2.3 oz | 65 g
instant yeast 1/2 tsp | 2.5 ml | .1 oz | 2 g
unbleached bread flour* 2/3 c | 160 ml | 3.5 oz | 100 g

*[I used Heartland Mill organic, unbleached, strong bread flour that I order in 50-pound bags from my local natural foods store.]

Prepare the biga
Nine to 17 hours before you want to bake, prepare the biga. Pour the water into a small mixing bowl. With a rubber spatula, stir in the yeast and flour just until a dough forms. It will be stiff like pie dough. Dust the counter with flour and scrape out the dough. Knead the dough for 1 to 2 minutes just to work in all the flour and get it fairly but not perfectly smooth. (This is a very small amount of dough, about the size of a plum.) [Mine was more like the size of a peach.] Lightly oil the mixing bowl. [I used Trader Joe's baking spray, which is what I've been using lately to oil my baking pans. It's made with canola oil and flour and works really well.] Round the biga and place it back in the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave at room temperature (70 - 75F/21 - 24C) for 1 hour, then refrigerate it for at least 8 and up to 16 hours. The biga will double in volume (to about the size of an orange) [mine was bigger], becoming glossy and porous, and will smell mildly acidic.

Bread dough
Ingredients | US volume | metric volume | US weight | metric weight
biga About 1 cup | 237 ml | 5.9 oz | 167 g
water tepid (70 - 78F/21 - 26C) 1 1/2 c | 356 ml | 13.2 oz | 375 g
instant yeast 1 tsp | 5 ml | .2 oz | 5 g
flour* 3 1/4 c | 770 ml | 17.6 oz | 500 g
sea salt 1 1/2 tsp | 7 ml | .4 oz | 10 g
oil-cured olives pitted & coarsely chopped 1 1/2 c | 356 ml | 5.3 oz | 150 g
coarse cornmeal for dusting

Mix the dough
Remove the biga from the refrigerator and uncover it. It will be soft, airy, and a bit sticky. Scrape into a large bowl. Pour the water over the biga and stir it with a rubber spatula to soften it and break it into clumps. [I used my hands.] Stir in the yeast, flour, and salt until a dough forms. [I used the US volume measurements, but because I'd ended up using quite a bit of extra flour making the Parisian Daily Baguettes, I measured out my flour in cups and then weighed it on my digital kitchen scale. Turns out my 3-1/4 cups of flour only weighed 456 grams. That extra 44 grams to reach the designated 500 grams was nearly a half cup, which I did end up adding while kneading. Click here to read Beth's recent article, "Weights & Measures", which discusses this very subject.]

Knead the dough
By hand: Lightly flour the counter and scrape the dough out onto it. Knead the dough until it is soft and almost smooth, about 10 minutes.

With floured hands, press the dough into a very rough rectangle and spread the olives over it. They will seem overabundant. Roll up the dough to contain as many of the olives as possible and continue kneading until the olives are evenly distributed and the dough is smooth and elastic, 3 to 5 minutes more. If olives pop out as you knead, push them back into the dough. They will tint the dough a grayish color.

By machine: [I haven't tried this.] With the dough hook, mix the dough on medium speed (4 on a KitchenAid mixer until it is fairly smooth, about 8 minutes. Stop the machine, scrape down the hook, and add the olives. Knead the dough on medium-low speed (3 on a Kitchen Aid mixer) until they are well distributed and the dough is smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Or knead them in by hand as directed above. They will tint the dough a grayish color.

Ferment the dough
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled, clear 2-quart container with a lid. [I used an inexpensive plastic freezer container that I sprayed with Trader Joe's baking spray.] With masking tape, mark the container at the level the dough will reach when it has doubled in volume. [I used a Sharpie permanent black marker, which washes off with dishsoap and a scrubbie sponge.] Cover and leave it to rise at room temperature (70 to 75 degrees F) until it doubles in volume, 1-1/2 to 2 hours. When you press your finger into the dough, the fingerprint should spring back slowly. [My kitchen was 83 degrees, so I put the container of dough in a cooler with an ice pack during fermentation. I should have checked it sooner; after 1-1/2 hours the dough had already more than doubled in size.]

Divide and shape the rolls
Sprinkle a light coating of cornmeal over the surface of the baking sheets. [I lined my baking sheets with unbleached parchment paper first. I didn't have coarse cornmeal, but the regular stuff worked fine.] Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured countertop and pat into a rough rectangle. With a bench scraper or chef's knife, cut the dough into 20 equal pieces (2.1 ounces/60 grams each). [I cut the dough into pieces and then weighed them on my digital kitchen scale, adding or subtracting bits of dough to make them all about 60 grams each.] Shape each piece into a ball. Place them smooth side up on the baking sheets, about 1-1/2 inches (4 cm) apart. Sift a veil of flour over the tops of the rolls and drape them with plastic wrap. [I was too lazy to pull out the sifter so I sprinkled the flour with my fingers, then covered the rolls with a damp tea towel instead of plastic wrap.]

Proof the rolls
Let the rolls rise at room temperature (70 - 75F/21 - 24C) until they expand to the size of a mandarin orange, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Press your fingertip into the dough and your fingerprint will spring back slowly. [The baking sheets wouldn't fit in my cooler, so I just let them proof in the 83F/28C kitchen for 45 minutes. I'm not sure how big a mandarin orange is, and this may have been a bit too long as the dough barely sprang back, and the rolls didn't rise very much in the oven. They looked and tasted great, though.]

Prepare the oven
About 15 minutes before baking, place one rack in the top third of the oven and another in the middle position. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Bake the rolls
Uncover the baking sheets and slide them onto the oven racks. Bake until the rolls are honey-colored, 20 to 25 minutes. [I baked mine about 5 minutes longer.] Halfway through baking, switch the sheets so the rolls bake evenly. [I'm usually paranoid about baking two racks of anything at once, but I wanted to follow this recipe exactly, so I tried it. Surprise! It worked great.]

Cool and store the rolls
Remove the baking sheets to a wire rack. Cool the rolls briefly, about 5 minutes, and enjoy them slightly warm. [Finally a bread that doesn't have to cool for 40 minutes before you can taste it!] The oil from the olives will help to keep them moist. Sstore uneaten rolls in a resealable plastic bag at room temperature for 1 to days. [Or freeze.]

Recipe reprinted from Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers by Daniel Leader (c) Copyright 2007 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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