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Quick disclaimer, my food photography is absolutely lacking on this post!
I love bread, and carbs in general. I could happily eat nothing but for every meal. Over the years I have made the NY Times no knead bread recipe countless times. I have tried my hand at pretzels and Italian bread. Up until now anything that requires a “sponge” hasn’t made the cut. It just sounded too intimidating to me. I’ve flipped through my copy of Bread Illustrated hundreds of times and put off making recipes I had deemed “too complicated” because of this factor.
For Easter this year I wanted to make a semolina in hopes that my body would be able to process it a little easier. Since semolina flour is higher in protein and fiber than white flour, I figured it was worth a shot. I found a recipe that felt simple enough despite having the dreaded sponge and committed to it before I could back out by informing JD of my plans.
From start to finish the bread took about 15 minutes of work and 3.5 hours of waiting. 5 minutes to whip up the sponge, 1 hour for it to rise. 5 minutes to add the remaining flour and ingredients, 1 hour for it it rise. 5 minutes of shaping the dough, 1 hour for it to rise. And 40 minutes to bake. It could not have been simpler and the results were amazing.
Now on to the recipe…
Semolina Bread
A simple and delicious semolina bread.
Servings: 1 Loaf
Ingredients
Sponge
- 1 Cup Water Warm
- 1 Tsp Active Dry Yeast
- 1 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour
Dough
- Sponge
- 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
- 3/4 Cup Semolina Flour
- 1 1/2 Tsp Salt
- 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
Instructions
Sponge
- Add warm water a mixing bowl and stir in the yeast until combined.
- Add flour, stirring to combine as you go.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside until the sponge doubles in size. About 1 hour.
Dough
- Stir the sponge to deflate.
- Add flour, semolina flour, salt, and olive oil to the sponge.
- Combine using a stand mixer on low speed for 5 minutes or until dough forms a smooth ball. About 7 minutes if you would prefer to knead by hand.
- Apply additional olive oil to the ball of dough and place in an oiled bowl.
- Cover with the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until the dough doubles in size. About 1 hour.
- Lightly flour a baking sheet with semolina flour.
- Place the dough on floured baking sheet, deflate, and begin shaping into an oval by folding the dough over and pinching the seams.
- Place the dough seam side down and cover with oiled plastic wrap until the dough doubles in size. About 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 400°
- Once dough has risen, make three slices across the top.
- Bake for 40 minutes until golden brown. Baking time may vary. Once done the bread should have a hollow sound when tapped on the underside.
- Remove from oven, let cool, and enjoy!
A few notes…
When I made this bread the guidelines for adding salt suggested 1 to 2 teaspoons. I usually do not cook with salt but wholeheartedly believe the best bread always has more salt in it so I added the full 2 teaspoons. I thought it was a bit too much and would make with slightly less next time, which is why I put 1 1/2 teaspoons in the ingredients list. JD disagrees and says he would keep the full 2 teaspoons in the recipe. To each their own so feel free to adjust the salt to your own preferences.
I also mention using an oiled bowl to place the ball of dough in in steps 4 and 5 and would like to clarify that I used the same mixing bowl the entire time so you don’t need to get out a separate bowl if you don’t want to. It’s just a little tricky to rub olive oil around the bowl one handed while holding the ball of dough in the other when you feel as uncoordinated as I currently do, ha!
And now a few snapshots of the process. I started taking photos to document after I got to the shaping stage and felt it was going pretty well.
We seriously raved about this bread all through dinner and let me tell you, the lasagna with homemade pasta JD made was absolutely amazing as well! It was so good I even had to make a butter to pair with it. Hear me out – we have this mini butter churner, which takes about 12 minutes if you start with room temperature heavy cream. I bought it because this restaurant we used to go to all the time made their own butter and always infused it with different things like cheez its or garlic and scallions. It was always the BEST part of the meal in my opinion! Maybe now is a good time to mention that butter is probably my second favorite food at the moment, ha! So naturally I came across this one day and decided I needed to add homemade butter to my life. It’s a real treat and is so easy to make! I definitely don’t make it as often anymore, but there was a definite phase in the beginning where we were eating a lot of fancy butter concoctions! For this bread I did black pepper, salt, and fresh scallions from the garden.
There you have it, an easy semolina you can make at home! Let me know what you think if you end up trying this recipe!
