Casatiello

     This week's bread came from my favorite bread book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  The bread was described as an Italian savory brioche.  I guess the only word to describe it is "squisto."  The dough began with a soaker of bread flour, instant yeast, and butter milk.  The soaker was mixed butter, eggs, additional bread flour, diced and sauteed Genoa salami, and coarsely grated provolone to make the Casatiello dough.  The 2 boules went into eight inch cake pans for the final rise (the bread can be baked in panettone papers, but the cake pans worked great).  I can not begin to describe the maddening aromas coming from the oven.  I had no idea how long 40 minutes of baking and 1 hour of cooling really is.  I seemed like days.  Wayne and I were hanging around the kitchen like kids waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney.  Once we cut into the Casatiello, the delicate crust of the bread encased a light, airy bread with little nuggets of wonderfulness.
     When I baked the bread yesterday it was one of those dreary wintry days that begged for soup and sandwich.  We opened a can of soup to go with this amazing bread that substituted for the sandwich.  I think we both could have supped on the bread alone.  Hallelujah, the sun came out today, but it was cold.  Since I was not baking today, we had homemade cream of asparagus soup with casatiello for lunch.  The soup was good, but the bread was fantastic once again.
    I don't know where I got my love of baking.  My mimi was a true believer that, "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."  Since my mother was a working mother, her friends were Mrs. Smith, Duncan Hines, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and Jack (he made good cookies).  One of my aunts used to bake with Occident Cake Mix.  My mimi apparently was not a fan of these cakes, she would always say, "Oh, here comes ______ with another accident cake."  (The name has been omitted to maintain family peace.)
     As a teenager I came across a recipe for shortbread cookies.  This is one of my Christmas baking staples, and my brother's favorite cookie.  From that recipe the baking of cakes, cookies, and easy pies became something I loved to do.  As I have said before, bread was something I always wanted to bake, and now I have the time to do it.  Eventually I want to learn to bake really good fruit pies and savory pies.  The past couple of Christmases I have developed a pretty good recipe for ham and cheese pot pie to use leftover ham.
     Christmas is rapidly approaching, and I need to start thinking about Christmas baking.  I am planning on making my first Stollen, shortbread cookies, a McKenzie-ish turtles, and a childhood favorite, Chinese chews.  So enough of this rambling - I need to start making my baking needs list.