March 28th

Bread

After just posting about trying to limit my carbs, I decided to make this dinner full of lots of crusty bread.  Moderation, right?

Italian Country Loaf Rustica
recipe from: Mary Ann Tobin

Our downstairs neighbor is a pie lover, so for his birthday his wife threw him a pie party, which I thought was the best idea ever!  We had savory pies for dinner and sweet pies for dessert.  This is one of the savory pies she made and it was so good I had to get the recipe! 
I'm never very good at making bread, but this is so simple and the fact that it's rustic makes it easier. 
This has Italian sausage in it and I am not the hugest fan of Italian sausage.  I think it would also be good with ground beef and similar seasonings.  Really you could fill this loaf with almost anything...even pizza toppings would be good. 

Ingredients:

• filling:
• 1 lb sweet italian sausage
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 8 oz mozzarella cheese, shredded or cubed
• 7 oz jar mild roasted red peppers, drained and chopped
• bread:
• 1 -1 1/2 cups all purpose white flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (I didn't have so I used more white)
• 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 pkg. fast acting dry yeast
• 1 1/4 cup warm water
• 2 tsp butter (softened) or olive oil
• 1 egg beaten
• 2-3 tsp sesame seeds (optional)

 Directions:

1. If sausage comes in casing, remove casing, breakup.  In a large skillet, brown sausage, onion and garlic.  Drain well and set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine 1 cup white flour, whole wheat, conrmeal, sugar, salt, and yeast.  Blend well.  Stir in water and butter or oil, mix well.  Stir in remaining white flour to form a stiff dough.
3. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.  This dough is extremely sticky to work with so flour your hands when working with it.
4. Spray a 9-10" springform pan and sprinkle lightly with cornmeal, shake to remove excess.  Take out dough and spread 2/3 in bottom and 2 inches up the sides of the pan.  Add cheese and peppers to the meat mixture and spoon over the dough.  Drop remaining dough over meat mixture.  Carefully spread to cover as best as you can, but dough will spread a little bit as it's cooking.  Cover loosely with pllastic wrap and a cloth towel.  Let rest in a warm place for 20 minutes or so.
5. Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Brush top of dough with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds.  Bake for 25-30 minutes.  To serve, cut in wedges.  Store leftovers in refrigerator.

 Grades:

Megan - A- (The only reason this got a minus is because I'm not the biggest Italian sausage lover.  It's really good though and the bread turned out nice and crusty.)

Noelle - A- (Noelle ate a pretty big piece of this even though it had peppers in it!  She liked that there was sausage in it even though she kept thinking the sausage was mushrooms.  I couldn't convince her that there weren't any mushrooms in it.)