Italian bread is torpedo-shaped with a crunchy exterior and a smooth crumb. It is made with white wheat flour, water, yeast, salt, and olive oil. The crispy crust is achieved by basting the bread with water. Italian bread takes about 45 minutes to bake and can be used for sandwiches or French toast. It can be stored in plastic bags but is best when fresh.
Each country produces its own version of bread, and Italians make many different torpedo-shaped loaves with a crunchy exterior. Sometimes you’ll find round or long oval bread made in the typical Italian style. Italian bread is similar to French bread in many ways, although the crust is usually not as hard. The inside of the bread tends to have fewer holes, exhibiting a nice smooth crumb throughout. Having bread with fewer holes is highly desirable, as Italian bread is often used to make sauces on dishes.
The simplest Italian bread is usually a combination of white wheat flour, water, yeast, salt and a little olive oil. The olive oil binds the ingredients together effectively, creating a slightly richer loaf than your typical French bread. Some variations of the bread add sesame seeds or poppy seeds to the top or side.
The crispy exterior is achieved by basting the tops and sides of the bread with water or by spraying the tops and sides with water from a spray bottle. This makes for a chewy crust, but not completely hard. Most recipes suggest that if you don’t use a stone oven for cooking, which few people do, you use an oven stone instead. When making Italian bread, be sure to preheat the stone as you preheat the oven to achieve the perfect temperature. Many cooks recommend preheating the oven for at least 30 minutes so that the oven temperature reaches at least 400°F (204.44°C). Other recipes call for the bread to be baked at 425 F (218.33 C).
Even at these high temperatures, Italian bread takes about 45 minutes to bake. This again may depend on the size of the loaves you are making. You can tell the bread is done when you poke the bread with a wooden spoon or other wooden kitchen implement. It should have a hollow sound.
Use Italian bread however you like, as a dinner accompaniment, for delicious sandwiches like Italian submarine sandwiches, or take day-old bread and use it to make French toast. This is a great all-purpose bread, but it can dry and harden in a day or two. To keep Italian bread from going stale, you can store it in plastic bags, but this takes away from the wonderful chewy, semi-hard crust. While you can perk up the crust by reheating the bread before serving it again, nothing really beats this bread when it’s still fresh and warm from the oven.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
