BBA Challenge: Casatiello

This week's bread was Casatiello, and let me tell you: I might have a new favorite bread! PR calls it "dreamy," and I would definitely have to agree! The thing is, I was really hesitant about making this bread, skeptical that salami in bread would be very good...but believe me, it was more than good! That's one of my favorite things about the BBA challenge: it inspires me to make breads that I would probably never otherwise attempt, but that turn out to be delicious.

This bread is basically a brioche with cheddar cheese and soppressata salami added after kneading. It bakes up to be an incredibly flaky, buttery, and flavorful bread. It's definitely best warm, maybe 20 minutes out of the oven, at which time it sort of tastes like pizza in bread form. It's also very tasty once the bread has cooled off, or toasted. It needs no accompianment, and is excellent just sliced and plain with no toppings.

Here's a photo of the sponge:

The soppressata is lightly sauteed to bring out even more flavor.

Here's the mise-en-place, ready to be mixed into the sponge: dry ingredients, egg, butter, cheese, and salami.

This is what the dough looks like after adding the extra flour:

After adding all that butter, things get much messier! But keep kneading and everything comes together without adding any more flour.

Here's the kneaded dough with the cheese and soppressata added, ready to rise.

These minis only had cheese (no meat) for vegetarians.

The larger loaf had the meat and cheese. So pretty!