Thursday, July 24, 2008

Italian Breads

At our last trip to the library, I picked up a couple of great recipe books: The Italian Cook, by Kate Whiteman; and A Little Taste of Morocco.

The Italian book has some fantastic recipes in it, and each one of the recipes is written in a step-by-step, easy to understand format. I've had fun trying out a couple of bread recipes this week, one of them for Foccacia, flat bread; and the other for Grissini, bread sticks.

The Foccacia was delicious, sort of like a really nice, crusty pizza base, sprinkled with fresh rosemary, salt, and olive oil. While it was cooking, the aroma coming out of the oven was heavenly. It is rather oily - the oven tray is well-greased with olive oil, and then the top of the bread is brushed with two more tablespoons of oil... but it's extra virgin olive oil, that's good oil, right? It's not butter or margarine. Anyway, oily or not, it was delicious. It was a hit with all of the family, in fact. I don't think I can post the recipes on here, I'm afraid that might be breaking copyright laws. I would if I could!

I made Grissini today, with help from several little sisters. They were also nice, with a sort of salty, garlicky flavour. Somewhat surprising, as there isn't any garlic in them! It's been a nice day for baking, very cold and drizzly, with a maximum of just 14 degrees C. Not really that cold I guess, but cold for us.


I haven't actually tried any of the recipes from the Moroccan cookery book yet, but I'd like to. It's quite a beautiful book to look at, full of photographs of Moroccan markets, cafes, streets, and food, of course.

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