In and Out of the Garden: A Blog

It hardly seems possible but next week is the final week of baking our way through Dolce Italiano as the Sunday Slow Bakers. This week was an interesting choice by Cindy Ruth, who has the very entertaining blog, Baked Alaska. I'm glad Cindy chose something different, something like the apple omelet that I never would have chosen to make out of this book. And something that I thought seemed strange, but ended up enjoying quite a bit.

Gina described these as a sort of Italian version of pretzel. But they seemed almost like a cross between a breadstick and bagel to me. The dough has no yeast, but is given lots of flavor with fresh oregano and red pepper flakes. Gina says you can try different flavor combinations, but I can see why she gave this rather spicy version. The heat of the peppers is addicting.

I did mine in two batches. I worked quickly because I needed to get them done for a dinner party that I had tonight. So my first batch looked a little sloppy, I think I got them to look a little better in the second batch. But these clearly have a rustic vibe going on. I also found that they took a little longer to bake than the 25 minutes specified, so on the second batch I used the convection setting on my oven, which sped things up and they were golden brown in just the right amount of time.

So, we had a nice savory snack this week. And next week for our final recipe we'll have gelato, which will be a fitting transition to our next book... more about that later.