Spring Bread

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 5 loaves, you will need:

• 1 250 g Parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano)
• 2 250 g Preserved tomatoes
• 3 chives
• 4 pepper
• 5 1 kg bread dough
• Total weight: 1,500 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
1 hour 35 min.	1 hour 50 min.	40 min.	4 hours 2 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Prepare the flavouring mixture Cut 250 g Parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano) into small dice and put in a bowl.
2	Drain 250 g Preserved tomatoes and cut into small pieces. Add to the bowl.
3	We will only be using the chive flowers.
4	Pull apart the flower heads directly over the bowl and discard the stalks, which are very tough.
5	Take off all the flowers like this.
6	Pour 2 or 3 tablespoonsful of the oil from the preserved tomatoes into the bowl, salt and pepper, then mix everything together. Note: if you cannot drain any oil off the preserved tomatoes, use herb olive oil or, if you have nothing else, plain olive oil.
7	Flavour the dough Put 1 kg bread dough into a food-processor bowl and tip the flavouring mixture in on top.
8	Knead for 2 or 3 minutes, just until evenly mixed in.
9	Make the loaves Gather the dough into a ball and transfer to a large, clean bowl, covered with a plastic sheet. Leave to rest for 1 hour.
10	Tip the dough out onto a floured worktop. Weigh out lumps of dough of about 300 g.
11	Shape into balls, cover with a plastic sheet and leave to rest for 20 minutes.
12	Roll the balls into short French sticks. See the baguette recipe for more details in a video.
13	Lay the sticks in the moulds or tins. Cover with a sheet of plastic and leave to rest for 1 hour 30 minutes.
14	Bake the loaves Preheat the oven to 460°F (240°C). Slash the tops of the loaves and bake for about 40 minutes. Note: As when baking any bread, you should ensure that the oven is filled with steam for the first 15 minutes of baking. This page shows you how; it really is the secret of golden-brown, crusty loaves..
15	Leave to cool before turning out.

Remarks

You can add a few finely chopped chives in with the flowers.
For the bread dough, I suggest you use the french baguettes recipe.
You might also like to take a look at this page all about bread.

---