BBA Slow & Steady #5: Casatiello Roundup

The BBA Challenge marches on (although a bit more like a stroll for those of us in the Slow & Steady subgroup) as we continue our way through all of the breads in Peter Reinhart's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. The current bread is Casatiello, an Italian version of brioche - rich and buttery and stuffed with cheese and salami. In a pinch, this bread could be a meal in itself! Our little Slow & Steady subgroup members were split between those who made loaves and those who made rolls, but all of us enjoyed the taste of this one. As it turns out, the loaves are first and then the rolls:

Di, of Di's Kitchen Notebook, and her husband belong to an Italian-American genealogy group, and Di was excited to find a bread that she can share when they attend the group's next pot-luck dinner! Di had a lot of fun playing with the recipe, baking one salami version and another "pizza" version with sun-dried tomatoes, asiago and mozzarella (pictured up top). Read her post, Now that's Italian.

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Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table made lovely sandwich-style loaves of bread, studded with salami and cheese. Her family loved this bread plain and in sandwiches. A little birdie told me that Kayte has made this recipe again (and again!) as rolls and they just flew off the table at a swim meet. Kayte's post: BBA Challenge: Casatiello.

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Audrey of Food From Books found the bread's dough to be quite lively at each stage of the breadmaking, rising (even quadrupling at one point). A breakfast chicken sausage sounded delicious to Audrey, so that's what she added to her bread in lieu of salami, along with some dried apples. Audrey got great loaf-shaping practice in making her dough into 4 mini loaves that she could pop in the freezer for later enjoyment. Check out the full post: Bread Bakers Apprentice #5: Casatiello

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Leslie of Lethally Delicious has joined us this month. Even though she's quite new to bread-baking, Leslie has taken the yeast world by storm. Her all-cheese version of casatiello is stunning, and she found it perfect for sandwiches or alongside lentil chili. Yum! Here's her post: BBA - Casatiello

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Melissa of From Laptop to Stovetop uses words like "YUM", "YES!" and "delightful" to describe this bread, so it's safe to guess that it was a hit at her house! She baked her casatiello as a pan loaf, but I'm guessing that she'll be experimenting with the paper-bag variation sometime soon...
Read about it here: Bread Baker's Apprentice: Casatiello

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Jessica of The Singleton in the Kitchen found out that making this bread in single-serve portions suited her singleton lifestyle quite well - she made adorable little rolls in paper molds that she'll pull from the freezer as needed.
Jessica's post: BBA SOS: Casatiello

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Sarah, of Blue Ridge Baker, is a lifelong vegetarian and was going to skip this bread, but then she was inspired by not one, but two, substitutions for the salami. This time she used cheese and toasted walnuts, and next time she'll use sun-dried tomatoes (and there will be a next time, because she loved this bread!) Get the details in her post: BBA Challenge: Casatiello.

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I was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved the bacon and cheese rolls that I made with this bread formula. My best stab at what they would be called in Italy is "casatiellini." Here's my post: Bacon Casatiellini {bba}

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Cathy of The Tortefeasor baked this bread weeks ago, and even though her second career as party planner (!) has kept her too busy to post it yet, she sent the fabulous picture just above. About this bread (which her family found yummy) she says: "Nothing will make you realize that it's not an orange cranberry muffin faster than a bite of pepperoni."