Anna del Conte (interviewed in the first issue of virtuousbread.com) gave me this recipe. She says they should be as “light as air”when you break them open.
Ingredients:
500 grams plain white wheat flour
2.5 g instant yeast/5 g dry yeast/10 g fresh yeast
1.5 tsp malt syrup if you can get it. Substitute honey if you cannot.
250 ml water
30 grams good quality lard (or butter)
2 and 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
10 g salt
Method:
Mix the water, malt syrup and yeast together. Cover it with a tea towel and let it sit for 10-15 minutes or until the yeast if formed a bubbly beige scum on the top of the water.
Mix all the other ingredients together and then add the yeast mixture and knead by hand for a good 10 minutes.
Pop it gently back into the mixing bowl and let it rise until doubled in size – about 1 and 1/4 hours.
Cut the dough into 8 equal pieces (about 120 g each) and place them on a work surface. Cover them with a damp tea towel and let them rest for 10 minutes. Then flatten each piece into a rectangle 10-12 inches long and 4 inches wide. Roll them up from the short side and place them seam side down on grease proof paper on a baking tray. Let them sit for 1 hour.
Turn them over and slice them from end to end lengthwise almost all the way through.
Bake them in a oven preheated to 425 degrees F (just over 200 degrees C) for 25 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped.
You can use this same recipe to make michetta. For michetta you make 8 round buns and just before you put them in the oven you make 5 slashes from the centre of the bun outwards and bake for the same amount of time.