BBA Challenge Bread #5: Casatiello

When I signed up for the BBA Challenge I expected that there would be some recipes I liked better than others, but I love pretty much all bread so I thought that the “bad” weeks would be few and far between. This week’s Casatiello bread seemed to be doomed from the start, and although it turned out mostly good enough to eat, I was seriously underwhelmed by the whole process.

This bread is quite interesting and reminds me of a breakfast scone or biscuit because it contains meat and cheese. It’s described in the book as a “savory panettone” and that really gives the perfect mental image for what you’re going to get. When I first read the recipe, weeks and weeks ago, I was excited to try it and thought it was going to be delicious. I planned to make it with pancetta and strong provolone, and thought about eating it for breakfast with some scrambled eggs . . . fast forward to the day I actually went to make it, and you will see the decks were stacked against it from the beginning.

The very first thing that went wrong was the milk. I had specifically bought whole milk to use in this recipe (and Brioche before it), but somehow the milk went bad in less than a week! When I went to pour it out for this bread, chunks came out of the carton. Yes, I almost puked. I chucked it and used the 1% I had on hand, deciding that if the sponge looked weird I would run out and buy a new whole milk and start over. The sponge looked fine, only a little bit runny, so I decided to go ahead and try it:

In the meantime I went to prepare the meat, and that’s when I found Problem #2: I bought the wrong meat!

This is prosciutto, NOT pancetta!

I couldn’t believe it when I took this out of the fridge. I even dug around looking for a second package in there, thinking maybe I’d bought BOTH prosciutto AND pancetta, but no. I just bought the wrong thing. I clearly remember buying it at Gourmet Garage: the two were next to each other in the case and I remember stopping for a minute to think about which one I was supposed to be buying. Apparently that wasn’t enough to ensure the proper ingredient made it home with me though!

A quick Google search confirmed what I thought, that the two are not substitutes for each other. It’s like substituting deli ham for bacon: not even close!

So I doctored things a bit by sauteing the prosciutto with added olive oil (pancetta is VERY fatty, so I had to replace some of the missing fat) and halving the salt (prosciutto is VERY salty). If you’ve ever sauteed prosciutto before, you know that it turns the most depressing shade of gray after it’s cooked, and looks downright unappetizing. At this point I seriously considered scrapping the whole thing, I was so annoyed at having the wrong ingredients that I didn’t even want to eat the bread anymore. And it was going to look ugly! But Adam said he’s eat it anyway, so I decided to finish it up just for documentation’s sake.

Next I shredded the strong provolone:

And by this point the sponge was done getting started:

(by the way, the 1% milk led to a very watery consistency, as one would expect!)

Once I mixed everything in, the bread looked like it might potentially turn out OK:

So I set it to proof and waited. It grew a LOT, I was kind of shocked!

(you have to take my word for it, because apparently I didn’t take a “before” shot)

Once I’d shaped the loaf and let it proof again, it looked like this:

Doesn’t look half-bad, right? Who would have thought!

THEN came Problem #3: my damn oven! I swear, this thing is out to get me. All of a sudden, it’s running hot again! When I came back after the initial bake time to rotate the pan, I stuck a meat thermometer into the bread (I always do this) and set the temperature warning, then walked away. Two minutes later, the alarm was ringing! I ran back and saw, to my horror, that the internal temperature of the bread was 10 degrees hotter than the target temperature. Unfortunately the loaf did NOT look done, the top wasn’t very browned and it looked like it still needed time in the oven.

I think these sorts of moments are how you find out what type of cook you are. Me, I don’t fit neatly into a category. I am definitely compulsive about measuring and following instructions, but at the same time I often eyeball things and improvise in the middle of a recipe. At this point in this bread, I had an internal battle with myself. My gut said the bread wasn’t done, but the thermometer (which had just recently passed a boil test for accuracy) insisted it was. If I were a 100% by-the-book sort of cook, I would have pulled the bread and thought nothing of it. Or if I were a 100% by-feel sort of cook, I would have left it in there and removed the thermometer.

Instead, I compromised: I gave it another 10 minutes, then pulled it out.

And the bread fell the second it got out of the oven. It clearly wasn’t done! Should have gone with my gut on this one, I guess. After letting the bread cool, we sliced into it and found the inside significantly undercooked. Adam ended up eating a few slices toasted in the toaster oven, but me? I literally couldn’t take a single bite.

I’m calling this week’s bread a FAIL, but I do plan on trying it again in the future. Next time I’ll use salami and make it into rolls, to eat like biscuits for breakfast . . . actually, that sounds so good I may get to it sooner rather than later . . .

Want to join us in the BBA Challenge? Get yourself a copy of Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice, the incredibly comprehensive how-to-book for bread, and play along! Full details on the challenge are here.

Tagged as: BBA Challenge, bread, bread baking, casatiello