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foodhackery · 3 years

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Sub Rolls

Some people, like my wife, could be happy never eating another sandwich. Me, I love sandwiches so much, that it’s hard to imagine what life would be without them. I don’t crave 3-Michelin-star food. I dream of what can be done with good fillings and condiments stuffed artfully within good bread. I love breakfast sandwiches, from Hardees or Biscuitville biscuits to bodega-style egg and cheese on a roll. I love the fare of my childhood, PB&J or bologna or sliced canned meat between two slices of white bread. I of course love hamburgers, chuckwagons, patty melts, tuna melts, hot brown sandwiches, croque monsieurs, and oh-my-god the corned beef and pastrami with slaw and Russian dressing on rye from the now closed Artie’s Deli on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

But the sandwiches I love most are sub-style, those beautifully architected ensembles of meat, cheese, veggies, and sauce on a sandwich roll longer than it is wide. Whether it’s a Bánh mì, a Cubano, a Po Boy, a Philly Cheese Steak, a French Dip, a meatball sub, or a good old fashioned Italian hoagie, I love them all. (My favorite sandwich of all time might very well be the Italian sub from La Villa Delicatessan in Willow Glen, California.)

The foundation of a good sub-style sandwich is the roll. And unfortunately, appropriate rolls are hard to find. Supermarkets these days tend to have very good artisanal bread. These breads are delicious, but more often than not have crust and crumb that’s too chewy for a sandwich where you want a harmonious balance between all ingredients versus the bread dominating. Needless to say, the stuff from the big commercial bakeries sold in plastic bags can’t hold a light to the bread used by great sandwich shops.

Which means that if you want really, really good sub rolls appropriate for your homemade Cubano or Po Boy, you’re probably going to have to make your own. I’ve been experimenting with recipes to try to find something that’s close to the sub roll of my dreams, one with a golden brown crust, deep yeasty flavor, and an elastic but soft crumb that has enough structure to hold up under heavy ingredient load, but that doesn’t require so much force to take a bite of that you have the sandwich payload squeezing out of the back. After lots of experimentation, I think that I’ve found it.

As with any recipe, this one has some essential elements:

It is 65% hydration. In other words, the water added is 65% the weight of the flour. This seems to give me the right balance between tenderness and structure. With sufficient kneading, this dough is also very easy to handle.

It uses an 18-24 hour poolish for flavor.

It uses both amylase and diastatic malt powder to help with rise, flavor, softness, and staling.

It uses a bit of vegetable shortening to enrich the bread.

It is kneaded for what most home bakers would consider a long time (15 minutes or more) to develop the dough’s gluten structure.

This recipe makes 1.1kg of dough that I split into 6 or 7 rolls. It scales up or down pretty easily. (If you’re going to scale by just multiplying all of the weights by a constant scaling factor, make sure to scale both the poolish and the dough by the same factor, otherwise you will not end up with 65% hydration.) The rolls will easily keep a week in a plastic bag.

In my opinion, these rolls are easy to make. They require a bit of time to make, but not a lot of actual work. With the poolish, which is almost zero effort, you get those rich flavors and aromas associated with long fermentation times. Which means that you can do your bulk and final fermentations really fast if you have a warm and humid environment.

My rhythm when I make these is: start the poolish on Friday morning. On Saturday morning, I throw together the dough and let it knead in a stand mixer while I’m doing chores. Once kneaded, I throw the dough into an 85F 100% RH combi oven for an hour to bulk ferment. While I wait, I read the news, watch videos, or catch up on e-mail. I then shape the loaves and pop them back in the oven for a final one hour proof, and do some more chores, work, goof off, or make breakfast for the family. I then heat up the oven and bake the loaves for 15 minutes and then rest for 20. Et voila. I have outstanding sub rolls before lunch on Saturday that I can bag and use throughout the week for no more than 30 minutes of actual work.

Ingredients

Poolish

150 g bread flour

150 g water

2 g yeast

Dough

450 g bread flour

240 g of room temperature water (75-85 degrees)

12 g salt

9 g yeast

12 g diastatic malt powder

4 g amylase

100 g vegetable shortening

For the poolish, mix flour, water, and yeast in a small container. I use 1 quart plastic take out containers for this. Place a lid on the container and the container in a warm place for 18-24 hours. At the end of the fermentation period, the poolish will have more than doubled in size and very much alive.

For the dough, combine the flour, salt, yeast, malt powder, and amylase in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix with a dough hook for a few seconds to combine. Add all of the poolish and the water. Mix until everything is combined and the dough has pulled together into a coherent, shaggy mass. You might need to scrape down the side of your mixer bowl a few times to get everything integrated.

Add vegetable shortening, and knead for 15 minutes. At the end of the kneading, you are looking for a very smooth dough that isn’t sticking to the side of the bowl and that is very stretchy. It should pass the window pane test if you are so inclined.

Turn the dough out into a greased pan and place somewhere warm and damp to proof. I put mine uncovered into an 85F, 100% relative humidity combi oven. If you don’t have a combi oven or a proofing cabinet, you can cover your container with a damp towel and put it some place that’s relatively warm. Proof until doubled in size, which should take 1-2 hours depending on your conditions. (Warmer and higher humidity will result in a faster proof. I wouldn’t recommend proofing faster than 1 hour.)

Turn the proofed dough out onto a floured work surface and divide into 6-7 pieces. 6 pieces ought to be approximately 190g each, and 7 will be approximately 160g each. Now, this bit is a bit difficult to explain without pictures, so you might want to find a video online to see this in action. Press each ball of dough into an oblong circle or rectangle. Tightly roll the flattened dough to form a cylinder about 6-7 inches long. Pinch the seams shut. Starting with your hands at the center of each cylinder, roll the cylinders out while moving your hands toward the ends. You’re trying to lengthen the cylinders to 10-11 inches, keeping them a uniform diameter throughout. (These are not baguettes where you want tapered ends.)

Transfer the formed loaves to a lined sheet pan. You can use parchment as your liner. I like these Silpats designed for bread and pastry. Dust with flour, semolina, or corn meal depending on your taste. Place back in your warm, humid place and proof until doubled.

Pre-heat your convection oven to 375F (or 400F if you don’t have convection). If your oven has a relative humidity feature or can inject steam, get the oven compartment as close to 100% relative humidity as you can muster. If you don’t have a fancy oven, you can put a cast iron pan into the oven as you preheat, and then toss some ice cubes into it right after you put the bread in. Slash the loaves down their full length with a lame or a super sharp knife. Put the bread in the oven, and bake for 15 minutes until deep golden brown and a thermometer registers 200F when poked into the center of a loaf.

Remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes.

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stempisces83-blog · 6 years

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focaccia sandwiches for a crowd

Last year, Alexandra Stafford published a very good book about bread. It sprang from a recipe for the peasant bread her mother made often when she was growing up. When she shared it on her site, it went viral, which is no surprise given that it’s no-knead, comes together in under five minutes, rises in about an hour, and after a brief second rise, you bake it in buttered bowls that form it into a blond, buttery crusted bread that she boasts is “the antithesis of artisan.” Because there are no hidden tricks; no steam ovens, special flours, lames to score the crust, or bannetons to shape the loaves. Her central tenet is that “good bread can be made without a starter, without a slow or cold fermentation, without an understanding of bakers’ percentages, without being fluent in the baking vernacular: hydration, fermentation, biga, poolish, soaker, autolyse, barm.” (None of those words appear in the book.) She knows that there are a lot of no-knead breads out there, but this is the only one that can be started at 4pm and be on the dinner table at 7.

I realize you’re thinking, as I briefly worried before I read it, how does one write an entire cookbook based on one recipe? But Stafford is a gifted recipe developer, and there isn’t a thing in this book — one part breads (with all types of flours, grains, and shapes, including pizzas, flatbreads, rolls and buns), one part toasts (including sandwiches, tartines, stratas, panzanellas, soups, summer puddings and so much more), and one part crumbs (a celebration of crunchy gratin toppings, stuffing, burgers, eggplant parmesan, fish sticks, meatballs, and brown bettys) — that I didn’t want to make. (I suspect that having four kids to feed ensures that these recipes were vetted by the most finicky of reviewer classes.) It’s also a gorgeous book, with a focus and format that my inner, long-surrendered organized person finds deeply pleasing.

My favorite thing in the book, and the one that I come back to again and again, is using the core bread recipe to make a focaccia that can be split and filled to make a sheet pan’s worth of sandwiches.* File this under things I never thought about pre-kids but obsess over now: Picking up sandwiches to go to the beach/park/pool/wherever your summer weekend takes you for a family or group of friends can be staggeringly expensive. I might even forgive the price if the sandwiches were usually better, but I’m sorry-not-sorry, they’re usually not. Either the bread is lousy and processed to the hilt, or they just don’t make them the way I want them, which is heavy on the vegetables and with a good mix of fresh, salty, crunchy, and pickle-like ingredients. Let’s fix this.

Below is the recipe for the simplest, quickest focaccia you’ll ever need to make and several sandwich filling suggestions (many vegan, too) I hope you’ll find good jumping off points.

* If you have Smitten Kitchen Every Day at home (do you? I bet you’d love it, I’m just saying) you probably already know about my slab-sized sandwich fixation. In the book, I use roasted tomatoes and more to stuff a focaccia *before* it is baked, inspired by a foccia ripiena we ate in Rome several years ago. This is concept is similar, but there’s no need to pre-commit to fillings.

Previously

One year ago: Blackberry Blueberry Crumb Pie Two years ago: Summer Squash Pizza and Peach Melba Popsicles Three years ago: Raspberry Crushed Ice Four years ago: Three-Ingredient Summertime Salsa and Blueberry Crumb Cake Five years ago: Charred Corn Crepes and Burst Tomato Galette with Corn and Zucchini Six years ago: Pink Lemonade Bars Seven years ago: Tomato Salad with Crushed Croutons Eight years ago: Nectarine Brown Butter Buckle and Sweet and Smoky Oven Spare Ribs Nine years ago: Best Birthday Cake, Arugula Potato and Green Bean Salad and Peach and Creme Fraiche Pie Ten years ago: Garlic Mustard Glazed Skewers and Huevos Rancheros Eleven years ago: Quick Zucchini Saute

And for the other side of the world: Six Months Ago: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies and Slow-Roasted Sweet Potatoes 1.5 Years Ago: Broccoli Pizza 2.5 Years Ago: Spaghetti Pie with Pecorino and Black Pepper, Banana Puddings with Vanilla Bean Wafers, and Taco Torte 3.5 Years Ago: Caramelized Onion and Gruyere Biscuits and Charred Cauliflower Quesadillas 4.5 Years Ago: Garlicky Party Bread with Cheese and Herbs and Fennel and Blood Orange Salad

Focaccia Sandwiches for a Crowd

Servings: About 12 sandwiches

Time: 2 hours

Source: Bread Toast Crumbs

Servings will vary by how you cut the focaccia, of course. Here I show 12 small/medium sandwiches. Depending on how hearty your fillings are, each person may eat 1 to 2 sandwiches.

You can choose your own schedule with this bread, by proving it for 1 to 1 1/2 hours at room temperature, overnight in fridge, or 10 hours at room temperature. For the last option, you want to make the bread with cold tap water.

To use active dry yeast instead of instant yeast, add it directly to the lukewarm water with a pinch of sugar to proof it for 10 minutes (it will get foamy) and then add it below where you will the water.

For more of a traditional focaccia flavor, you can sprinkle 1 tablespoon chopped or minced fresh rosemary over the top with the salt before baking it.

4 cups (520 grams) all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon instant yeast

2 cups lukewarm water, made by mixing 1/2 cup boiling water with 1 1/2 cups cold water

4 tablespoons olive oil

Flaky sea salt

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and instant yeast. Add the water. Using a rubber spatula, mix until the water is absorbed and the ingredients form a loose, sticky dough. Cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and [choose your schedule]:

Quickest rise: Set aside in a warmish spot for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until doubled.

Overnight in fridge: Set inside your refrigerator overnight, about 8 to 10 hours.

Overnight at room temperature: For this method, you will need to use only cold, no lukewarm, water. Leave the bowl on your counter at room temperature for 10 hours.

When you’re ready to make your focaccia: Pour 3 tablespoons oil onto a rimmed sheet pan (can use a 13×18, or half-sheet pan, but if you have something more 11×17-ish, as I use here, will make for slightly thicker loaf; you can line it first with parchment paper for maximum nonstick security).

Heat oven to 425°F.

Using two forks, deflate the dough by releasing it from the sides of the bowl and pulling it toward the center. Rotate the bowl in quarter turns as you deflate, turning the mass into a rough ball. Use the forks to lift the dough onto the prepared sheet pan. Roll the dough ball in the oil to coat it all over.

Let dough rest for 20 minutes (for Quickest rise or Overnight at room temperature) or 1 hour (if you used the Overnight in the fridge rise, so it warms up) without touching it. Then, drizzle last 1 tablespoon of olive oil over and use your fingertips to stretch and press the dough to the edges, leaving it intentionally dimply. If your dough resists being stretched all the way, get it as stretched as you can, wait 5 minutes, and return to stretch it the rest of the way, repeating this rest if needed.

Sprinkle with flaky sea salt all over and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, checking in on the earlier end, until lightly puffed on top and golden and crisp underneath. Remove from oven and let cool completely (this will go faster if you transfer the bread to a cooling rack) before assembling sandwiches.

To make sandwiches: If you’d like, you can trim off the very outer edges — this exposes the crumb and makes it a little easier to halve. (I didn’t do this because I like to make things hard, also I like edges.) Stafford recommends you begin the halving process by cutting through each corner, then running the serrated knife through the short end until you get to the midway point, then starting from the other short end until I get to the midway point. A sharp, serrated knife is helpful. Try to keep your knife as parallel to the bread as possible. She says she finds if she hugs the top layer as opposed to aiming for the center, she gets a more even cut.

Some ideas for sandwich fillings:

Avocado + Crispy Kale [Shown]: First, crisp your kale. I used a 5-ounce clamshell of curly kale leaves, tearing out and discarding any thick ribs. Rub/toss them with 1 tablespoon olive oil, spread them on a large baking sheet in one layer, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and baked them at 375&#176F for 10 to 15 minutes, until crispy and just barely brown at the edges (keep an eye on it). Then, scoop out and slice 4 avocados, fan the slices across the bread and mash/spread them smooth. Coat with olive oil, lemon juice, flaky salt, and red pepper flakes (like we do here). Spread crispy kale over avocado.

Hummus + Cucumber + Pickled Carrots [Shown]: First, coarsely grate 1 pound of carrots. Pour 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup cold water, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1 to 2 teaspoons (to taste) of granulated sugar over it and stir to combine. (You could also add mustard or dill seeds or fresh chile peppers here.) Chill in the fridge for as long as you have — 30 minutes, an hour, and up to a few days. Carrots will get more pickled the longer it soaks. To make your sandwiches, schmear the bottom half of the bread with about 1 1/2 cups hummus (storebought or homemade). Squeeze out little handfuls of pickled carrot and sprinkle this on as your next layer. For you final layer, use a y-peeler to shave long ribbons off 1 large (1/2 to 3/4 pound) seedless cucumber. Tousel these on top; season them with salt and pepper.

Walnut pesto + grilled zucchini ribbons (skip the parmesan in the pesto to make it vegan)

This grilled pepper and torn mozzarella panzanella, minus the croutons

This crunchy asparagus and egg salad

Pickled vegetable sandwich slaw + anything else you love on sandwiches

This salsa verde + any grilled or roasted vegetables

This zucchini carpaccio salad, as a sandwich filling

Any of the sandwiches from the archives

Many of the salads from the archives, such as this egg salad, this chicken salad (not vegetarian, of course), that chicken salad, or even (I love this as a sandwich) this chicken caesar, with the dressing spread on both sides of the bread, the chicken thinly sliced, and the romaine cut into thin ribbons. I wouldn’t be sad to have a broccoli or cauliflower slaw between bread, either.

Or, of course, endless slices of peak-season tomatoes + mayo + salt, or the same plus sliced mozzarella + basil pesto

Source: https://smittenkitchen.com/2018/08/focaccia-sandwiches-for-a-crowd/

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