Bread Baking Babes fire up: Stromboli

Versatile Babes, versatile Bread, versatile Baking. We range from fluffy to filled, from artisan to artistic, dowdy to doughy and this time Elle as our Kitchen of the Month thought we should bake something Italian; Stromboli.
You could say this is the savory dinner cousin of your breakfast cinnamon bun; it’s a white dough rectangle on which you arrange cheese, vegetables, herbs and sliced meat.


In my case I rummaged through my fridge and found fresh spinach (yay!), salami, two different cheeses and some left over feta, a lonely slice of ham and snipped some dried tomatoes on oil, added a hand full of olives. From the garden came basil, rosemary and thyme. The lower kitchen drawer revealed basil flavoured olive oil. Sounds good?
Tasted great!!
The dough on itself was of the kind that would easily replace a stressball. So soft smooth and strong. A very touchy feely dough, in my case also flavoured with some fresh ground pepper and again the basil olive oil.
Stromboli
adapted from Ultimate Bread by Eric Treuille & Ursula Ferrigno
by Girlichef

Ingredients:
2 tsp. dry yeast (I used instant)
1 ¼ c. water (268 grams)
3 ½ c. unbleached flour (470 grams)
1 ½ tsp. salt (11 grams)
3 Tbs. olive oil (38 grams)

For the filling and topping:
8 oz. smoked swiss cheese (226 grams)
3 cloves garlic, minced 8 oz. Prosciutto, sliced thin (226 grams)
4 oz. pepperoni, sliced thin (113 grams)
Handful of fresh basil leaves
~1 tsp. coarse salt
3 sprigs rosemary, stems removed
~1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Sprinkle yeast into 1 c. of the water, in small bowl. Leave for 5 minutes to then stir to dissolve.
Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in center and pour in dissolved yeast and the oil. Mix in flour from sides of well. Stir in reserved water, as needed, to form a soft, sticky dough.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth, silky, and elastic...~10 mins. Pour dough in a clean, oiled bowl and cover with clean kitchen towel. Let rise until doubled in size, 1 1/2-2 hours.
Punch down and shape into a ball. Let rest 10 minutes.
Roll out into a 14" x 8" rectangle. Cover with a clean towel and let rest another 10 minutes.
Spread your cheeses, meats, garlic and basil evenly over dough. (You can use your own combination of meats and cheeses, or roasted veggies and garlic or whatever you like for filling.) Roll up the dough like a swiss roll, starting at one of the shorter sides, but without rolling too tightly.
Place on oiled baking sheet. Use a skewer or a carving fork to pierce several holes through the dough to the baking sheet. Sprinkle with 1 Tbs. of olive oil, salt, rosemary and pepper.
Bake in preheated (400 degrees F) oven for 1 hour, until golden. Drizzle remaining olive oil over top. Slice and serve!!
My notes:

- for the ingredients I used see above the recipe
- added some fresh ground pepper in the dough
- used 150 gr starter and held back on the water because of that
- kneaded the dough in my bread maker; a little on the sticky side but after the bulk rise: perfect.
- to avoid the stromboli/volcano effect do pierce the dough roll several times! (Mine burst a little at the seam anyway ;-D)
- Oh roll up from the short side?? Hmm I rolled from the long side… made for more than a foot long bread!
- I was a little confused though: no second –shaped- rise?

After the hordes went away… all that was left – or rather that I rescued for the picture!
Come and see what my fellow Babes baked, blog roll on the left hand side! Go to Elle’s for the details on our Buddy Baking!