1/6/09 | Homemade Stromboli
[ Currently Eating: Sausage Stromboli ]
And a Happy Stuffed Sausage Bread New Year to you too.
I had a nice little dollar store Cheap Eats post all ready to go today. But that’s gotten preempted (much like all my favorite shows are preempted by stupid American Football nowadays) by some crazy Stromboli action.
I know it’s hard to believe, what with my dumblefingery baking skills, but I actually made a practical approximation of a Sausage Stromboli just an hour ago in the oven. I couldn’t believe it either. I hope this is a harbinger of Cheap Eats Baking to come for 2009.
I know you’re supposed to use a pizza stone for this kind of stuff, but I was able to make one using just a Silpat on top of a cookie baking sheet. I think because the dough was thin, it didn’t matter as much. It didn’t have as crunchy a crust as a real pizza, and the cheese leaked out of the bottom, but the end result was pretty amazing. I did use a broiler tray for steam this time, so maybe that helped the crust. This one had canned tomatoes, jack cheese and cooked Italian sausage in it.
It’s about this point that I need to confess that the recipe for the stromboli comes straight outta Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (abbreviated as AB5MD from now on) which I got for Xmas. I really think they should’ve taken out the word “Artisan” - it tends to scare non-bakers like me away. At first I thought it was some frou-frou book written by a poofy-hatted chef in Limoges. They should’ve just said Amazing Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.
I hate to be one of those “book boosters”, but this bread tome is pretty damn good. I started off before this book going down the Jim Lahey No-Knead route (google it, for the NY times article, since the bastards prevent hotlinking). That recipe was the revelation, and this book extended it by letting you keep batches of pre-mixed dough in the fridge for 2 weeks.
Earlier, I’d experimented with making your own yeast - but I’ll save that topic for another day. Plus, it’s a little more inconvenient and requires more time. I just used the standard yeast packets.
I’m only on the basic master recipe in AB5MD which uses water, salt, unbleached white flour and storebought yeast. But it’s been good enough for most everything - however, I was surprised it worked well for the Stromboli because I didn’t have a pizza stone. Also, I’ve been using a combination of the Lahey method and AB5MD method for all the bread. Basically, I said forget the pizza stone and used a non-stick cast iron pot like Lahey recommended. Use the cover for 1/2 the cooking time and you don’t really need to use a steam tray. The bread comes out pretty good, though not perfect. The dough recipe is just an ordinary 6-3-3-13. That’s 6 cups lukewarm water, 3 tbsp yeast, 3 tbsp kosher salt, 13 cups flour. Mix it, cover and let it stand for 2 hours and put it in the fridge. That is all - enough dough for 8 1lb loaves. Halve the recipe if it’s too much to store.
I’ll try get a full recipe up for the stromboli, maybe an AB5MD book review as well, when I get to the other enriched doughs of later chapters. For now, it’s pretty darn good and cheap eats. It’s great to be able to make larger batches in advance instead of just one at a time like the Lahey method I was using.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
That book sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing!
January 7th, 2009 at 4:36 am
Interesting. I’ve been toying with starting to make our own breads so we can have exactly what we want. The recipe you mentioned above has no sugar?
January 7th, 2009 at 8:03 am
that, my friends, is a fine looking strombolli.
but what was the cost of it? Cheese and sausage don’t come cheap.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:18 am
@sharon - the book is pretty good, I’d recommend it for non-bakers who want to get in on the action quickly and cheaply.
@andrea - yes, the basic has no sugar. the salt is there for flavor and i believe to inhibit the yeast a little bit. But i feel the basic 6-3-3-13 is too salty for me. I think I would cut it down to 1.5 tbsp instead of 3 tbsp salt - or even less.
@adam - it was surprsingly cheap. i’m going to call the dough nearly free (maybe 5-10 cents) since you don’t need a lot. Canned tomatoes, less than 1/4 cup maybe 15 cents. Jack cheese, used sparingly, maybe 1/4-1/2 cup, about 30 cents at most? Bulk Italian sausage from Costco. I used one sausage of a 24 pack that costs about $13. So 50-60 cents. Totals about $1.05 to $1.15. The cost of blasting the oven at 450 degrees for just 1 stromboli adds to it, i would probably make more of them at once now that i know it works =)
January 7th, 2009 at 8:20 am
oops: also add a few cents for olive oil brushed on top, plus some dried oregano.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:33 am
This is how I always dream my homemade stromboli will turn out. of course, they never do. glad to see someone can achieve the dream
February 11th, 2009 at 3:13 am
I read about AB5MD over on EGullet.
I was very hyped, because the author of the book, Zoe Francis, was participating in the forum, and I generally respect the members of that forum as being very food knowledgeable. So I was inspired to make the Master Recipe: 6-1/2 c AP flour, 3 c water, 1-1/2 T yeast (2 std 2-1-4 t packets), 1-1/2 T KOSHER salt. I’m convinced the ones that make the recipe and say it’s too salty are using regular table salt, which is not as fluffy as kosher, and therefore more concentrated. The sodium concentration’s almost double for table salt as opposed to kosher. I followed the recipe to the letter on faith.
What a disappointment!
I waited 3 days before using the first of the dough because people said the flavor only started to develop then. I made pizza, which was edible, we ate all of it, including the leftovers, but it was not nearly as good as my kneaded recipe for homemade pizza dough. Practically anything is edible when
The next day, I tried to make the boule for which the recipe was designed. If the pizza was a disappointment, the bread was a disaster.
I made two pizzas each with a quarter of the recipe and a “boule”: leaden, inedible lump, and I’m throwing the last fourth of the dough away. Maybe the raccoons will like it. It is the middle of winter, and they are pretty desperate.
Check out the EGullet thread if you like. Perhaps your results will be as positive as some of the posters there. Mine weren’t, and I plan on kneading and cleaning the counter in future.
Note: this recipe might work if you baked it all off on the first day. The dough is very lively then. The yeast dies in the fridge, and doesn’t revive with the recommended rise times.
Karen
February 11th, 2009 at 9:32 am
@anne - I’m actually very surprised this turned out, and very appreciative of all the comments from everyone.
@karena - you’re correct on the kosher salt vs. table salt, though I never had the issue since we only use kosher salt. On pizza - I tried it but didn’t have much luck because we have no pizza stone, nor pizza peel. Just used a Silpat w/ baking sheet. It was edible.
With normal Boules, though, I’ve had tremendous success with their method. Every single one I’ve baked has been edible. I’ve baked it right away on the first day, and up to a week and a half later with the same results. I did notice that after about that time, the yeast tends to die off. One thing I do differently is I use the Lahey method of cooking it in an enamel cast iron dutch oven with lid. I don’t know if that would make a huge difference, but since we have no pizza stone - that’s what I go with. The stromboli and such, I make on a silpat on baking sheet.
I understand that the results may be disappointing for anyone who has baked before - but for me it was inspiring. So I think I might start trying kneaded dough after this book gave me the confidence.