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| With a very sharp knife, cut 3 slits into the top of the dough ball about 1/8" deep. You do not have to press too hard to do this. Just lightly run the blade once across the top to make a cut and then do it two more time. You do not want too deep of a cut or your dough or it is going to look all funky and spread out too much after it rises again. |
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| After you have made your cuts. Sprinkler corn meal of the top or the dough... |
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| Then spread the corn meal around with a brush. |
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| OK, this is really starting to look good!!! |
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| Do this for both dough balls. |
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| Now make your egg wash mix. Egg whites and water. There sits the beautiful dough ball in the setting sun read for a nice egg wash. Auh.. make bread at home is just a wonderful think. It warms your heart! |
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| Now brush the egg wash over the dough ball and corn meal. |
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| The best way I have found to make this work with tow loaves of bread is as you see here. The pan of water in the oven is important! You need the moisture in there! |
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Now fill the pan with boiling water again and let the dough rise AGAIN! yep... again!!!! For 1-1/2 hours. This is your last rising.... you are almost ready to bake! Weeee!!!!! Hey! You could clean your kitchen again! Or just take a break! Actually, I had a football game on so this was perfect, it was half-time as I was placing these in the oven to rise again, so now I could just chill and watch the game while the bread was rising on this perfect day! :-) |
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| OK, this is what it looks like after your loaves have risen again for 1-1/2 hours. Now what you do is "gently" take your risen loaves out of the oven and place them on a table to sit somewhere while the oven preheats. Be very gentle with them at this point. Preheat to 375 degrees F and then put the loaves back in the oven in the same manner in which you had then rising, two cookies sheets and a pan of water. Cook for 20 minutes, take out shut the door quickly so you don't loose heat in the oven. Brush on more egg wash and put back in the oven and cook for another 20 minutes. Be sure to reverse the order of the loaves when you put them back in the oven so they both cook evenly. |
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| Now words can describe. This is just prefect bread! The smell.. Oh man! The house smells great at this point! |
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| Now, this is the hard part. You need to let the bread cool for about two hours before you cut a slice.... |
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| Yeah right!!! Good luck with that. I lasted 30 minutes and started slicing, I couldn't stand it, I just had to have a piece!!!! |
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| The problem with slicing the bread too early is that it can tear and fall apart on you because it has not cooled sufficiently. Just make sure you have a sharp serrated knife and that you cut carefully on the first slice! This make the best toast on the planet!!! |
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That's it! You did it! You made perfect Italian Bread! The great thing about this recipe is that it makes two loaves. What's nice about it is you can have one loaf for your self and give the other away to a good friend or a neighbor. A fresh loaf of bread is an amazing gift! Go ahead, try it. Give a fresh loaf of Italian Bread to a friend and see what kind of response you get :-) Happy cooking!i |
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