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Getting Hollow Rosetta Panini

Vitto's picture
Vitto

Getting Hollow Rosetta Panini

Hi All.  I have been attempting to make Rosetta Panini.  I made my own stamp as I could not locate any in Australia (any help from fellow Aussies appreciated here).  Although they look ok and taste delicious I could not get them anywhere near as hollow as I remember them to be in Italy.  Could anybody help me out with a recipe and/or tips for getting hollow panini.?

suave's picture
suave

There's a recipe in Leader's "Local Breads", which I was actually looking at this morning. He says up front though that making them hollow is not easy and in his best ones he could get golf-ball sized holes.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Inject a little air into the middle?   Think it might work?

Wet it first and slowly inflate.  The heat should do the rest further expanding the cavity.  

rjerden's picture
rjerden

The dough needs to be very expandable. I use a weak dough of 3 parts soft wheat flour and 1 part hard wheat flour ( I buy these separately and mix them). Also a lot of heat is needed on top of the roll during the first 5 minutes to get it to puff up. I use a convection oven with the fan on. You can use an apple slicer if you don't have a rosetta stamp. Just score halfway through the risen roll. I make 80g rolls.

Make a tight ball, mash it down into a disc, then fold the 4 sides to the center. Push the center to form a pocket. Holding each corner, push the corners up to meet, thereby trapping the pocket between them. Seal all edges and pull up into a tight ball. It should have a dimple where the pocket was formed. First rise with the dimple up, flip and stamp with the dimple down. This puts the pocket on the bottom center of the rosetta.

mrfrost's picture
mrfrost

Where did you buy the stamp? Not the apple slicer, but the real stamp? There is a thread here with posters going nuts on where to buy that specific stamp you have pictured near the bottom. Any shots of the baked results using the apple slicer?

Hope you say it was a local purchase, as I am in the Atlanta area. I tried Dan Leader's Local Breads recipe which calls for high gluten flour. I don't have a stamp, but was able to get somwhat of a pocket. Just tried to push air towards to center, and some manual scoring.

Didn't like the toughness of the high gluten flour though. 3.4 oz rolls:

 

rjerden's picture
rjerden

I bought 2 rosetta stamps, one from an Italian site, and one in Italy this past winter near Padova from a bakery supplier. The one from the site is pretty expensive, but it should last forever. You'll have to pay for overseas shipping, too.These are actually pretty hard to find even for Italians, as I was following a thread in Italian on Cookaround.it and everyone was asking where to get the stamp. Mario Ragona is a well-known pastry chef and just opened an on-line store where I purchased the first stamp. http://www.rbshop.it/stampi-per-pane,43.html

The second one I purchased in-person at Officine Bano near Padova, kind of out in the middle of nowhere. They had tubs full of these- in 2 sizes. 24.90 Euro. I use the 105 mm one. They actually are not set up for retail, but will gladly take cash if you don't ask for a tax receipt. http://www.officinebano.com

 

via Piovego, 99 - Z.I. Arsego

S. Giorgio delle Pertiche 

35010 (Padova) IT

 

Tel. +39 049 9333111

Fax +39 049 9333100

Here's 2 rolls in the bunch from yesterday stamped with the apple slicer. This was not a very typical batch as I usually get much better puffing results. Be careful not to go too deep or they will open up when rising in the oven. BTW, I'm in the Atlanta area also. I use 75% White Lily AP flour and 25% White Lily bread flour to approximate the Italian 00 flour. The biga is 90% of the final dough. I also add either some malt syrup (expensive) or a 75% dark corn syrup-25% molasses blend that I think has basically the same flavor as is much less expensive. I get everything from Publix.

 

 

rjerden's picture
rjerden

Here's a new batch of Rosette I did yesterday stamping 6 with the apple slicer and 10 with the professional rosetta stamp. I got pretty good puffing, but still not my usual results. The last picture shows the inside, stamp on left, apple slicer on right. I'm pretty sure the missing factor is more heat. I pre-heated to 500F this time, but I think I get better results when I pre-heat to 450F and then turn up the heat to 500F a minute before baking. This keeps the top heating element red-hot during the first 5 minutes. I did this on the last batch of 4 and got much better puffing. I also raised the height of the rack to get it closer to the top element, but risked too much browning. Next time, I think I'll try putting the oven on the broil setting to see what happens. This should keep the top element red-hot, but I'll lose convection.  I got pretty good puffing on the ones using the apple slicer, too. The picture show the folding technique and the points at which I spritz during baking. I do one last spritz during browning to get some shine. I wish I had a steam oven. I'm pretty sure the main factor to getting a good puff is lots of heat. I took a batch of risen rolls to my pals at the Taste of Italy pizzeria here in Woodstock to bake in their pizza oven at 550F. They put them in the back of the deck and they puffed like crazy. Even got the slightly burnt bottoms like the ones in Rome.Flattened discFirst FoldSecond FoldThird foldFourth foldReady to pull up cornersReady to sealReady to flour and riseSpritz before bakingReady for 1st spritz in ovenReady for 2nd spritz3rd spritzLast spritz during browningInside - stamp on left, apple slicer on right

supcumps's picture
supcumps

I used google chrome to view and translate the following web site.

 www.pianetapane.it/noe/pagine/liv1.asp?idp=5

The last step was "Infornare a 250-260° con abbondante vapore " which means plenty of steam.

I have tried cooking baguettes with a heavy metal tray in the bottom of the oven, full of hot water  and the oven steaming before I put in the bread for baking.

I wonder if that would help in this case? I don't have an actual recipe to try it out myself.

nicodvb's picture
nicodvb

You need a very strong flour to get that level of explosion and a totally empty rosetta inside, at least in the biga. This is an aspect that isn't always well clarified in recipes.

Most italian millers dedicate to rosetta a flour even stronger than the one for panettone. They called it "soffiato".

 And no, that W250-270 is absolutely insufficient. Did you see the inside of those rosetta? I didn't :-)

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven
rjerden's picture
rjerden

I agree completely with the comment about using a stonger flour. I tried and tried to use the traditional Italian recipes with weak and medium strength flours here in the U.S. and never got good results unless I used Italian flour (Antimo Caputo Pizzeria -blu). I am getting great results now, but don't expect to get what the pros can achieve with their specialized equipment. I now use the strongest bread flour I can find, give it a very long pre-ferment using a dry biga at 44% hydration and increase the final hydration to 66% to compensate for the stronger flour. The long pre-ferment (20-24 hrs) increases the extensibility of the dough, something very important for this bread. You also need to add a decent amount of diastatic malt to the final mix, so it will weaken the gluten matrix on the inside of the dough balls during the final rises, thereby allowing the dough to break and form one big bubble inside. The other key is to get a strong skin on the doughballs by folding and stretching. The goal is to achieve a strong skin and a weak center. It will take a while for the diastatic malt to do its magic, so you want a fairly cold final mix and long slow rises. I also can't overemphaszie the importance of lots of good steam. It takes about 5 minutes for the rolls to fully puff and unless they are moist and under high heat, it's not going to happen.

 

rjerden's picture
rjerden