Hi all---great list; I'm glad I happened onto it!
Question: I'm looking for a recipe for a roll I used to have with just
about every meal while studying in Rome. It's a hollow roll...the ones we
had tended to have a pretty stout crust. At the time, it never occurred to
any of us to ask for a working recipe...and, frankly, we never learned the
proper name---we called them "moonrocks".
After much research, the best reference I've been able to come up with is
one posting to a bakery forum
<http://www.protano.com/wwwboard/messages/111.html>, which identifies the
rolls as either "botticini" or "rosetti", due to a rose pattern die-stamped
into the top of the roll. (we never thought of it as a rose, per se, but it
makes sense
The posting at the link above lists the following as information gotten
from a Roman baker:
"Dough - 800 gm soft (all purpose) flour, 200gm hard (bread) flour, 10 gm
salt, 10 gm yeast". He said 500 ml water, but this seems too little for the
soft dough.
The characterstic rose shape is made by stamping a piece of risen dough
with a special die which he said can be purchased for about $50. We didn't
see any in the stores.
Baking: The oven temperature is 300C which is 575F. Baking time is 12 to 13
minutes. The atmosphere in the oven should be very humid. You can achieve
this by putting trays of water on the bottom shelf of the oven.
The baker said that the more bread that you bake at one time, the better it
is and no other special technique was used to get the hollow center.
I'm looking forward to experimenting with this, but I'd love to find some
more information before I get too far in...and a little validation that I'm
not completely crazy wouldn't hurt, too...as I recall, these rolls were
*all over the place* in Rome...
Anyone have any familiarity with these?
Side note: when I left Rome, I took one of these rolls with me...they
really were an integral part of our daily life on campus...I figured that
I'd sink it into a block of lucite and make a paperweight out of it. I
never got around to it...that roll has sat, in an unsealed sandwich bag,
for 11 years now. The crust has chipped a bit---which, considering that
it's been packed up and moved 8 times over those 11 years, is to be
expected, I'd think. But, other than that, it looks exactly the same. (so,
if anyone wants to see a photo, I'm sure I could manage it!)
Thanks for any help you can offer!
John Chamberlain
john@mockturtlesoup.com