BBA: Anthos (Greek Celebration Bread)

Now they're coming thick and fast. The lack of rigid schedule for this BBA challenge is allowing my obsessions to get the better of me, and I'm baking at a too rapid pace. Still, I have guests this weekend, and they'd probably like some bread to eat while they're here.

They can eat Anadama bread. At least half of that loaf is still left, and I'm not sure that the puffy airy Anthos (Greek Celebration Bread), flavored with spices and almond and orange oil, will be lasting until they get here.

This bread is presented by Reinhart as a kind of base recipe for various kinds of Greek holiday breads, including the Easter loaf studded with red eggs, and the New Year's vassilopita. It is soft and sweet and rich, laden with eggs and milk and oil, as well as the aforementioned spices. It's also, thanks to the addition of commercial yeast and sourdough, perfectly light, and disappears very quickly. It's too rich for real every day bread use, but I can't imagine a better loaf for french toast or bread pudding or mushing up and eating with fresh slightly overgelled rhubarb jelly.

Italian Semolina Twists (Pane Siciliano)

I've got a new bread book, from another master of the bread book field, Peter Reinhart. It's called The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and is a fanatically detailed tome that aims to teach the amateur baker enough to help them feel free experimenting. Reinhart, the author of Crust and Crumb and Whole Grain Breads, has a very different voice than Daniel Leader of Bread Alone. Reinhart is a teacher at Johnson & Wales culinary schools, and his writing is a reflection of what must be his teaching style, adapted for the home baker.

The book is structured by formulas, many of which apply to several varieties of bread up until the last dough mix. For instance, the pate fermentee that I mixed for my first trial of the book could have become a French bread, a Pain de Campagne, or the Pane Siciliano that I finally chose (along with a series of variations).

A large amount of pate fermentee is mixed into the final dough, and nearly half of the remaining flour added is fine semolina. Because my semolina is fine but not really a bread grind, I used a little less than the suggested amount.

The bread is sweet and uncomplicated, it's been on your dinner table in hundreds of restaurants (if you're the type to visit hundreds of restaurants), and it's just as good as it looks right here. The characteristic shape is achieved by rolling the dough into a baguette shape and then rolling the log right up to the middle from either end, on opposite sides.