Onion Tomato Bread Recipe Photos with commentary

Anthony's Onion Tomato Bread Recipe Photos with Commentary
(Step by step photos of the cooking process for this recipe with commentary!)

Read the complete Onion Bread recipe
.

I have placed some explanatory photos below that, hopefully, will help you along in your Italian culinary adventure. Sometimes a picture and a few tips really helps!... ;-) These are the details I feel are always missing in your average recipe book or recipe website.

Making Onion Tomato Bread. Step by step photos Part 1
Making the bread dough.

Step one. Clean your counter! This is important because you will be preparing you food right on the counter.

Here's the stuff you will need. Not much really, simple ingredients, but amazing how great it taste in the end :-)

You need to have a nice large bowl. If you look closely you will see the title on the flour bag that says "Bread Flour". This is what I recommend using.

When you measure out the flour, don't pack the it. Fill it up buy scooping the flour into the measuring cup, then use a knife to scrape off the excess flour.

Here we have the flour and the yeast. Ooh, pretty :-)

Important! Squeeze the yeast into the flour. Work the yeast in VERY well and do this before you add the salt. Very important, trust me.

This is where you will start to get your hands dirty. It's ok... Get messy!

You need to find a strong plastic scraper and use this to cut into the flour as you're adding water. Mix with the scraper until it gets to hard to use it. Then switch to using just your hands.

Now start working the dough with your hands.

It's going to be sticky and messy, don't worry, it's ok. It will stop being sticky soon.

Now take the sticky dough and just plop it right onto your counter. Do not add any flour to your hands or the counter at this time. You really don't need it, just work with the sticky dough. At this point you do not want to add any more flour to the recipe.

Work the dough.. Work it! What you want to do is pick up the dough, flip it, and then smack hard onto the counter top. then you pull it toward you while part of the dough is sticking to the counter top. Then you fold the dough back over on itself trying to capture air while doing so.

Then you press it with the palm of your hand, pick it up and BAM! Slap it hard onto the counter top again, fold it over capturing air and flip slap fold, flip slap fold.

You keep doing this for about 15 minutes. It's going to take some muscle and real effort!

Making Onion Tomato Bread. Step by step photos Part 2
Finishing up the bread dough and starting to make the tomato onion filling.

Ok, again, Slap, pull....

...fold and capture air while folding. Just keep on doing this.

Here I am capturing air during the fold.

After a while it will no be a sticky. This is about 15 minutes into working with the dough and you can see here that the dough is getting smoother and less sticky.

Work with it a bit more, almost ready. At this point which would be about 15 minutes of working with the dough, you can add just a touch of flour to your hands to work on getting the dough just a bit smoother.

Just about there! Wheeew! Breaking a sweat yet? You should be.

Ok! Done! Dough is ready to rise now. At this point you will throw a little bit of flour into a bowl...

...and then you place the dough in the bowl like so.

Now you are making a nice moist warm home for fluffy, um.. uh.. I mean the dough ball. This will help the dough rise to it's full potential.

Here's the dough ready to go.

You will want to place a dish towel of the bowl like you see here, then shut the microwave door and set a timer for 1.5 hours and do not open the door again until the timer goes off.

Here we have 3 beautiful medium sized Sweet Onion. Aren't they just lovely?

...and here are those beautiful onion all sliced up. Sliced, not chopped.?

Now you start to saute the onion with garlic and olive oil, some black pepper and basil.

Here we have a can of whole tomatoes and a strainer. You are going to strain as much of the liquid out of the tomatoes that you can.

Pour the whole can of tomatoes in the strainer...

Making Onion Tomato Bread. Step by step photos Part 3
Finish making the tomato and onion filling and starting to stuff the bread dough with this yummy filling.

Just squeeze the tomatoes with your hands up against the sides. Squeeze all the liquid out that you can.

Then you will brake up the tomatoes with your hands right into the sauteing onions. Yes, you will get a little messy, it's ok, really :-)

Pull the tomatoes apart. Break the whole tomatoes into small pieces, as small as you can get them.

At this point you need to add a couple splashed of a nice red wine. Any dry red wine will do.

Now you simmer for about 5 minutes or so. not shown here in the photo is the addition of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Important step!

Then drain out any liquid that might be in the pan.

Oh my! Just look at the beautiful dough! It has risen quite nicely. It should at least double in size.

Now you sprinkle some flour on your counter like so.

Then you take out the dough. Do not just pull the dough out of the bowl with your hands. Use a flat wooden spoon to gently pry it out of the pull.

Now you will very gently work with the dough. From this point on you need to be very gentle with the dough trying to keep it light and fluffy. Ok, so now you know why I call him Fluffy ;-)

Gentle now... Gently press the dough out, slowly stretching it as you go to a achieve larger size. Keep working with it until it's start to double in size. At that point you will want to flip the dough and sprinkle a little bit more flour onto the counter.

This is what you're shooting for. Something about this big. Careful not to spread the dough to thin.

No wad a little bit more Parmesan cheese Mix well and let this filling sit for a good 15 minutes or so so it cools off. You do not want to put hot tomato filling onto the dough.

OK, once it's cooled of you will spread out the filling to one side of you spread out dough like you see here. Then add a bit more Parmesan cheese. This is a good time to sprinkle on fresh chopped parsley as well. Or any other herbs you happed to like.

Sprinkle on some fresh ground black pepper.

Then ad some nice fresh Spinach leaves like you see here. Oh man! This is starting to look GOOD! :-b...

Making Onion Tomato Bread. Step by step photos Part 4
Fill and shape the dough and prepare for baking.

After you have finished adding the Spinach leaves, you will then want to fold the dough over the filling like you see here.

Then make sure you seal up the edges nice and tight.

Seal up all sides. After you have sealed up all the edges you will then slide this onto a bread stone. Be sure to throw some cornmeal onto the bread stone before you put the bread on it. If when you are picking up the bread with the filling it stick to the counter a little bit, you will need to get some more flour. Lift up the bread a lit and throw some flour between it and the counter then just keep working at it until you can pick the whole thing up and plop it onto the bread stone.

Then with a sharp knife, cut a few slits here and there. Be creative, this is the fun part where you can make it pretty. See the large whole in this picture? That was kind of a mistake, too big of a slit, you want you whole smaller than that. What you want to achieve it to have some of the tomato filling exposed. This makes for a nice presentation. Note: If the whole thing does not fit on your bread stone you could half the dough before you add the filling and just make two small loafs instead of one big one.

You need to get something sharp like a meat thermometer or just something pointy so you can poke a bunch of wholes in the dough to allow steam to escape during the baking process.

Here sits your creation all ready to go. Now at this point your oven should be preheated to 425 degrees F. In the oven it goes for 25 minutes.

...and here we are 25 minutes later. YUM!!!!

Beautiful!!!!!!! And it tastes good too! :-)

Here's the bread cut in half and ready to serve. Just look at that lovely onion, tomato filling! This is very good fresh out of the oven.

Now after all that hard work you finally get to sit down and enjoy! I'm telling ya! This is good stuff!!!.

On the left here you can see the finished product. Delicious! My grandma Salerno used to make this during Christmas time. She made it a little differently than I do. She made it almost like a lasagne. Long and flatter baked in a lasagna pan. That is another way to make this. When this is ready, I recommend serving this sliced on a plate with a fork just incase some yummy filling falls out while you are eating it with your hands. Now when you have this the next day you will want to slice it into thin pieces about 1" thick and toast them in the oven.