January 10, 2016 - 5:04am
very dense and chewy italian bread
When I was a kid in Watertown, NY, we had a bakery called Alteri's. They made a delicious Italian bread. They still make it, but the recipe has changed to make the bread much softer. The older recipe created an extremely dense bread that had almost no holes and it was very chewy. Any thoughts on how to recreate this style of bread? I'd appreciate any ideas or recipes. Thank you.
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Since, there are many different types of Italian breads, what more info can you provide about the specific type of loaf you're after?
A very dense, chewy, and thick old school Italian loaf. It had very few holes, was obviously rolled and sliced on the top for rising purposes. It wasn't sourdough.
The higher the proportion of other flours (whole wheat, rye, etc,) the more dense the loaf will tend to be. And denser tends to mean more chewy.
Baking with steam will produce a crustier result that can also be considered more chewy.
Also, while I've never done either intentionally, I suppose it's possible to deliberately produce a denser loaf either by baking it while the dough is still what would normally be considered under-proofed or by de-gassing fully risen dough prior to baking it.