Wonderful Tuscan Bread with Brewer's Yeast Recipe is one of the most digestible recipes I've ever made.
This is due to the long rise of the dough, which allows the yeast to consume almost all the sugar in the flour and prevents the evening process from continuing in our tummies. I think it's the recipe you've always wanted to try but haven't figured out yet. I am not from Tuscany myself, but I am not that far from it (Rome is, in fact, only 2.5 hours from Florence). I often visit and have a nice Tuscan meal in the beautiful countryside. One of my favourite things has always been the bread you eat there (a drop of Tuscan Oil and a pinch of salt, gorgeous).
Tuscan cuisine is famous worldwide, but you may not know that it is possibly the cheapest to make because of its ingredients. Most dishes are made out of almost nothing, few, simple, and often unrefined raw materials. This Tuscan Bread with a Pinch of Brewer's Yeast is no exception.
NOTE: This same bread can also be made by replacing the Brewer Yeast with Sourdough (add 5g to 545g of flour instead of creating the biga), clearly with the Sourdough's distinct flavour and adjusting the rising time. For more information about sourdough, refer to this article HERE.
Ingredients for my Tuscan Bread with Brewer's Yeast using Biga
Biga differs from Poolish and Sponge primarily for its dough-like consistency and lower hydration. However, it's basically a stiff "Poolish" and a "Sponge". It's an enriched Biga.
For the biga:
175g of flour 0 (I use the coop)
100g of water
One pinch (or crumb, I wasn't sure how to translate this) of brewer's yeast (much less than 1 gr)
For the actual dough:
The Bga (275g)
250g of flour 0
125g of water
How to Make Tuscan Bread with Brewer's Yeast
Step 1 Preparation
Dissolve the yeast crumb in the water and add it to the flour. Knead until you have a smoother and homogeneous dough, brush it with oil, and place it in a container (better if it is a tall, straight-sided jar so you can monitor its growth). I used the 1 kg honey jar).
Keep it aside and rise at room temperature for at least 12/13 hours (if the biga develops too fast, place it in the refrigerator, or if you want to slow down its growth, add one or 2g of salt).
After the required hours (in winter, the times increase because the temperatures are lower), mix the chariot BRIEFLY with the remaining ingredients; put the dough in a container, cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30/35 minutes.
Step 2 forming the loaf of Tuscan bread.
At this stage, gently crush the dough to create a rectangle; roll it up from the top and fold the dough towards you with your thumbs to make it stick to the bottom of the dough.
Sprinkle with a mix of flour 0 and rice flour: the latter is not essential except for the bread's scenic effect. Rice flour browns at higher temperatures and remains white at the bread's baking temperature, creating the effect of dusted flour.
Place the loaf of bread on a floured oven shovel or, if you don't have it, on the back of a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and sprinkled with rice flour.
Cover with a clean tea towel and a plastic bag. Leave it rising for about 1 hour.
Step 3 Cooking of Tuscan bread loaf
Preheat the oven to 200 ° and place a heat-resistant bowl with half a centimetre of boiling water inside. Transfer the bread with a dry movement straight from the shovel to the hot pan in the oven. Bake for 15-17 minutes at 200 °C, then reduce to 180 °C for another 30 minutes.
Turn the stove off and move the loaf to the grill, but keep it in the oven for another 15 minutes to reduce the amount of moisture accumulated while baking.
According to the rule, the minimum size of Tuscan bread is 500g.