Tuscan rosemary and raisin bread for world bread day

Loads of interesting events this week! Today it’s World Bread Day and Kochtopf had the great idea to do something foodbloggiesque about it. Since I’m making my own bread (mostly sourdough) for the last 6 months, it was almost impossible not to participate with great enthusiasm. Of course, I had to choose an italian recipe (how could I not?): this rosemary and raisin bread is tipical of some parts of Tuscany. Now, you should know that tuscan bread is mostly made whithout salt, some explain that this is due to the already quite salty tuscan cured meats, others argue that it’s because of the difficulty, in remote ages, to find and buy salt. However, in fact there isn’t any salt in this recipe either, although these aren’t sweet buns or anything likely and that this bread is really at it’s best with some thinly sliced lardo di Arnad or a good tuscan pecorino cheese.
I borrowed the recipe from Le ricette regionali italiane, a true bible of italian regional cooking with more than 2000 recepies gatherd in the sixties by Anna Gosetti della Salda.

Panini al ramerino

freshly made bread dough 400g
olive oil 4 tablespoons
flour
fresh rosemary 1 sprig
dried raisin 2 tablespoons

Put the dough on the pastry board and make a hole in it’s center. Poor the olive oil in a small saucepan, add the shredded rosemary and warm up over the lowest heat. Take of the heat when the oil will be warm and let infuse for about ten minutes. Filter this profumed oil and poor it into the hole you made in the dough. Begin kneading, dusting the dough with a little flour at the time untill it becomes less sticky. Let the dough rise again in a tepid environmente for one hour. Cover the raisins with tepid water and let them soften for 10 minutes. Squeeze out the raisins and add them to the raisin dough. Grease your hands with a little olive oil, form small breads and put them to rest for another 30 minutes on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake the bread for 15 minutes at 190° in a preheated oven.

world bread day ’06