No-Knead Pizza Baguette for BBD # 66

 la ricetta in italiano qui

Karin of Food for Angels and Devils is hosting this month Bread Baking Day # 66 and she's asking to bake our ultimate Baguette for this special occasion, another challenge of my favorite baking event, created by charming Zorra long ago and still so current and exciting.

Have already done baguettes, chocolate Viennoises for BBD # 52, lovely for breakfast, and original Julia Child's recipe for this popular French bread.

And I am very fond of No-Knead Bread, in all its shapes: buns - tasty bites - pizza - focaccia.

As I was given a lovely basket of cherry tomatoes from Sicily, I went for a sort of no-knead pizza-style baguette, enriching the dough with a savory caciocavallo and oregano, and garnishing the top with these nice ripen cherries.

Any hard cheese will work,  choose your favorite, although you could include mozzarella as well, but be aware to use a little less water in the dough.

You could not resist to these baguettes (in fact they were four originally, but then only three have been photographed, as one quickly went while shooting :-): go for a luxury aperitif with a glass of sparkling wine or a more popular with a light beer. Baguettes can always be warmed up to be nicely fragrant as just baked.
If you are not so keen on tomatoes,  try with olives, artichokes or even peppers in oil (in his book Jim Lahey also suggests cloves of garlic, are you so foodaredevil?).

 

Serving 4 baguettes:

200 g all purpose-flour
200 g whole wheat flour
350 g water
80 g grated cheese
2 g fresh yeast
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp salt
40 cherry tomatoes
extra virgin olive oil
fleur de sel or maldon salt
oregano

extra flour or semolina flour for dusting



 

- Dissolve the yeast in a little water.
- In a large bowl combine the flour with cheese and salt, add all the water (and yeast), olive oil and stir quickly with a fork.
- Cover with plastic wrap and leave this sticky dough to rest for about 18/20 hours at room temperature (in summer it only takes 12/15 hours) .
- The dough will increasingly rise and fill with bubbles (see photos here).
- Gently turn it on a floured work surface, sprinkle lightly with flour and fold it up, pulling a flap outwards then to the middle, repeating 3 or 4 times. Better to help with a spatula as the dough is quite soft and sticky.
- Place a clean kitchen towel on a tray or onto the working surface, sprinkle with flour or semolina (I prefer semolina, the dough will absorb less ), and helping with a spatula transfer the dough onto the cloth, folded side underneath. Sprinkle generously with semolina and cover with plastic wrap, then gently fold in the corners of the cloth onto the dough. Let it rest at room temperature a couple of hours.

- Pour the dough onto the working surface (lightly floured) and divide it into four pieces. Stretch each piece into a loaf of 45/50 cm and place it in the baking baguette tray, or on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, keeping the loaves enough spaced (in this case, when three-quarters cooking tome is over, place baguettes directly on the oven rack).
- Halve the tomatoes and place on baguettes: it only took me 10 halved cherries for each baguette.
- Spread a little oil on the baguettes, sprinkle with oregano and a pinch of fleur de sel and bake at 200° for about 15/20 minutes, until golden.

  Queste baguette partecipano anche alla raccolta Panissimo, creata da Barbara di Bread & Companatico e Sandra di Indovina chi viene a cena?, ospitata questo mese da Patty.

This recipe also goes to Susan's weekly YeastSpotting.