Panmarino

There are quite a few breads (and sweets) that catched my eye while reading Carol Field's The Italian Baker. The one that intrigued me most was panmarino, a white bread loaf flavoured with olive oil and rosemary. I have to admit I never heard of this bread before. This is not so strange; after all talking about Italian breads is like talking about Italian cuisine, there is none. There are many regional cuisine families and a few nation wide dishes. Similarly for bread there are a few widespread breads (focaccia, rosette, pane pugliese) and hundreds of local specialities. Field says this bread is the (re-)creation of a baker from Ferrara (if I'm not mistaken, I don't have the book at hand now), which is quite some distance away from Napoli (where I come from). This possibly explains my ignorance.

I modified the recipe a bit since I find that Field uses much more yeast than I would. I also increased oil and rosemary for a slightly stronger taste. There should be no problem therefore for me to give you the recipe.
I used:
450 grams bread flour
4 Tbs EV olive oil
1 Tbs dried rosemary
1 Ts dry yeast
1 1/2 Ts salt
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup milk
coarse salt as topping

The yeast went in with water and milk till dissolved and flour, salt and rosemary got mixed together. I added the oil to the yeast mixture and then the flour and kneaded for about 10 minutes. The dough rose for about 2 hours. Then I carefully flattened and shaped it in a round loaf which I left to rise 45 minutes, slashed it with a star, or better said, asterisk pattern on top on which I sprinkled the coarse salt and baked it. It baked 10 minutes at 230C and another 20 at 200C. Field says that it should not rise till doubled before you bake it otherwise it will not properly bloom in the oven. I guess my loaf could have done with a bit extra rise. Instead I rushed it a bit, since it was quite late already. Not that I have anything about staying up late. But, when you have a little one waking you up every day at 5 AM, staying up baking till 2 AM loses a bit of its charms :-)). Still no disastrous effect. The bread only bloomed a bit less than it could have.
The taste was really nice, olive oil and rosemary evident but not too strong, the crumb dense and golden (from the oil). I think it is a great bread for meat sandwiches and that's exactly how I used it the next day for a quick lunch.

Comments

[Deb]

Your loaf of bread turned out lovely!
I love the combination of olive oil and rosemary, it must have been very fragrant while baking. What do you use to make your slashes in the dough? I've seen a specific tool for it, (the name eludes me at the moment) but have resisted buying one, I'm wondering if I should.

[albiston]

For slashing I use a simple razor blade. I just hold it tight and flat between my thumb and forefinger to avoid cutting myself. At first I tried with one mounted on a skewer (similar to the specific tool I believe) but i found it hard to control. The slashes were always a bit wobbly.

[Lawrence Hare]

Do you have the recipe for Rosette or Michette, that wonderful Milanese bread which is empty inside? It seems to be a mystery how it is made, which I daresay is not simple! But we sure would like to try (both my wife and I cook and she is well versed in bread)...

I lived in Milan for many years in the seventies and sure do miss that bread.

Thanks - Lawrence

[Alberto]

Hi Lawrence,

I tried making rosette once or twice but always with disappointing results. I read around a bit after that and found out rosette are practically impossible to dublicate at home. They need a special cutter to get the characteristic shape and particularly high oven temperatures to turn out hollow. Joe Ortiz, in his "The Village Baker" has more information on rosette. You might want to read what he has to say on the topic.

[gemma]

I made panmarino using your recipe yesterday and it turned out beautifully (though, not as attractively as yours). Thanks for the inspiration, I will certainly be using this in the future.

[Alberto]

Gemma, thank you for your nice words. Your bread looks great! BTW you can use dried rosemary if you need to: the result is not as "fresh" aromawise, but it's a good emergency solution. Sorry if I'm answering here to your post, I'm having problems blogging onto blogger.

[rachl]

Thank you for posting this recipe! I lived in Firenze for 3 years and ate panmarino every morning for breakfast--it's extremely common at the corner bakeries there. The Fiorentine variety, however, also has white raisons in it. I was skeptical about this at first, as well, but the rosemary and raisins turn out to be lovely together. It would probably work in this recipe to tone down the rosemary and oil a touch and add 1/4 cup of white raisins.