This week’s bread for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge is Peter Reinhart’s Casatiello. Which I consistently and unashamedly misspelled and mispronounced. It’s the Italian answer to brioche, but with meat and cheese inside. Or, at least, mostly inside…

I halved the recipe and converted it to grams. I replaced the yeast with sourdough starter and reduced the flour and water amounts respectively.

Sponge ingredients

• 64 grams sourdough starter (100% hydration)
• 77 grams water
• 6 grams milk powder

Dough ingredients

• 227 grams (8 oz) bread flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 egg, large, beaten
• 85 grams (3 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 85 grams (3 oz) coarsely grated cheese

I refreshed the sourdough starter. When it was bubbly and active, I added the remaining water and milk powder and continued the rest of the recipe from there.

This recipe was supposed to have both meat and cheese in it. Cheese in my bread I can handle, but meat? Uh… I ditched the meat – the idea of meat in my bread was less than appealing, especially considering the meat choices we have here. It would be either chicken weiners or chicken weiners or, well, I could always go with chicken weiners.

Sausages – real, actual sausages, not lousy cheap disgusting weiners masquerading as sausages – don’t exist here. No pepperoni, no salami, and certainly nothing any fancier than that. And the last time I enjoyed weiners in my bread, I was probably four. So, yeah, there goes that idea.

For cheese, I used Biga mild cheddar, imported from Australia. It was the only decent cheese at our grocery store, and while it isn’t the greatest, it definitely fills the cheese void. 🙂 And instead of shredding it, I cubed it, which was possibly a mistake since those cubes ended up producing holes in the dough. Um, oops? 🙂

This wasn’t a complicated dough to put together, especially not since I’ve mostly survived brioche. 🙂 It was a slow riser, taking about 4 hours for the first rise and an hour and a half for the second.

The end result? A nice bread that we liked, despite it looking like a very bad case of nasty acne. 😀 Tasted good, decent crumb, not too crusty crust. Great for sandwiches and generally eating smeared with butter. *cough* heartattack *cough* 😀

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-07.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-07.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after mixing” alt=””]

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-08.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-08.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after mixing, side view” alt=””]

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-12.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-12.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after first rise” alt=””]

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-13.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-13.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after first rise, side view” alt=””]

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-15.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-15.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after shaping” alt=””]

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-17.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-17.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after 2nd rise” alt=””]

[pg-image src=”http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090612-19.jpg” link=”http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090612-19.jpg.html” caption=”casatiello bread dough, after 2nd rise with closeup of cheese holes in dough” alt=””]

I’m also submitting this post to Yeastspotting, a weekly showcase of truly drool-worthy breads. In addition to this being part of Sourdough Saturday here on my blog. 😀