The right bread can be the difference between a cheesesteak and a “genuine Philly style steak and cheese sandwich.”
Philadelphians understand that line. The rest of you might be scratching your heads wondering what I’m talking about. In a word: Amoroso’s. Okay, that’s not helping you yet, is it?
Okay, put it this way. When you’re in Italy, you wouldn’t describe a restaurant as “Italian”. Kind of obvious, right? Well, when you’re in Philly you wouldn’t ask for a “Philly style steak sandwich”. You’d ask for a cheesesteak. Unless you want people to look at you like you just stepped in a pile of dog poo.
And if you’re somewhere else? “Philly style” on the sign is a dead giveaway that it’s not. It’s either a cheesesteak or it’s not, no qualifiers needed.
All of which is a really long way of getting to the point: I miss Amoroso’s so bad. Since I can’t get it here, I’m going to make my own. I may not get it perfect on the first try, but I’ll keep tweaking it until it’s as close as I can get.
Ingredients
1 package (1/4 ounce, 2-1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1-1/4 cups warm water (105°-115°)
3 cups unbleached flour or all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
cornmeal for dusting
Directions
Dissolve the yeast in a quarter-cup of warm water. You should actually check the temperature of the water. Too cold and it won’t activate, too hot and you can kill the yeast.
Give the yeast a few minutes, until it starts bubbling, then mix it in with the rest of the warm water.
Add the flour, sugar and salt and stir.
Don’t add the oil until after you’ve worked the water and flour together. Otherwise the oil will coat the proteins and prevent gluten formation. Gluten lets the dough stretch when it rises, making it light and chewy instead of crumbling like cake.
After mixing the oil in, turn the dough out onto a clean, floured surface to knead.
Stretch the dough away from you, fold it back, turn a quarter turn and repeat. Once the dough is well incorporated, slap it on the surface a few times. This will encourage more gluten production leading to a lighter, airier bread.
When the dough is smooth and silky, continue kneading for another several minutes. You can work it with both hands and keep turning the dough, or just hit it from opposite angles with each hand.
Once the dough is thoroughly kneaded, place it in an oiled bowl. Toss the dough around so it is coated with oil all the way around.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap, pressed right up against the dough. This will prevent a skin from forming on the dough, allowing it to rise more.
Put the bowl someplace warm until the dough has doubled in size, about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.
Pre-heat the oven to 425°. If you have a pizza stone, put it on the bottom rack. Otherwise, place a baking sheet upside-down on the bottom rack.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and punch down to knock out most of the air out. Don’t go crazy and try to turn it into a pancake. Just give it a quick couple of hits.
Roll the dough out into a loaf shape and cut it in half. You can form the halves into loaves or, like I did here, divide each half into three smaller pieces.
Roll out the pieces of dough until they are about 6-9 inches long.
If you have a peel (the large wooden spatula you see in pizza shops) use that. If not, a wooden cutting board will work. Dust it with cornmeal so the dough doesn’t stick.
Cover the loaves with plastic and allow to rise for another 40 minutes. They should roughly double in width.
Cut each loaf down the middle with the sharpest blade you have. If you don’t have anything that is absolutely razor sharp, use a razor blade. You want to cut about a quarter-inch deep in a single quick stroke without sawing back-and-forth. This will prevent the bread from bursting open when it rises in the oven.
Transfer the loaves onto the baking stone. Leave room between loaves for them to rise some more.
If they don’t all fit on your stone, put the rest on an upside-down baking sheet.
Bake at 425° for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 400° and bake another 25-30 minutes. To check if they’re done, pick one loaf up and thump on the bottom with your thumb. If it has a hollow sound, it’s done.
If you want really crusty bread, great for dipping in olive oil or marinara sauce, place a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. The steam will keep a skin from forming too fast, giving the bread more time to rise. It will also make the crust crisper.
Don’t put the loaves near the top. The radiant heat from the top of the stove will brown the crust too much, too fast. Guess which ones in the picture below were on the baking sheet?
Serve immediately with butter, or with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping.
And that’s it.
Or … let them cool off and maybe use them for sandwiches. Maybe I’ll have something special comingng up next. You think? Maybe?
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70 Comments
I’ve been hunting all over to get a sub made in my area with this kind of bread. There are even some sub shops that have it shipped from Amoroso’s. Weird thing is, by the time it gets here, the roll turns into a large hot dog bun!
After much frustration I decided to simply break down and make it myself. Great recipe and very simple, not even much mixing is required.
Used an air-bake cookie sheet on which I wiped with Crisco and dusted with cornmeal and then allowed the rolls to rise on the sheet. Put an empty metal bread pan on the floor of the gas oven and added 1/2C of water after the bread was in place on the rack. Instant steam that way but not sure if it matters. Got 4 standard sub rolls out of this recipe and they came out really well. Check my web link to see the beauties.
Max, nice work. Now you just need an Italian deli.
I tried this off the webpage and it worked pretty good I must say… I decided to make it again and I printed out the recipe card and the directions were different…. going to give it a shot…. the card wants you to mix all the water 1 tsp of sugar and a cup of flour together and let sit for 10 minutes… the webpage wants 1/4 cp of water with the yeast for a few minutes then the rest… just strange that the card is different from the page…. cant wait to see which it better it at all…
David, that’s a good catch. The page was showing one of the first times I had done this recipe. I have since done a lot more yeast breads, and the card describes my current technique.
Do both techniques correctly and there shouldn’t be much difference in the final product. But with the method described on the card, there’s the added safety factor of “proofing” the yeast — makings sure that it’s activated before mixing in the rest of the ingredients.
If you don’t proof the yeast first, everything might still come out fine. But if the yeast was no longer good, or if you had the water too hot and killed it, you won’t know until a half-hour later when the dough still hasn’t risen.
Hi, I made this recipe as directed, except I cut all the ingredients in half (its just me eating the bread) and the bread never became golden or crusty despite putting water at the bottom. It also remained relatively flat and dense, though it is quite tender. I have an electric oven.. could this change the result? I also used all organic ingredients, would this also affect it? I heard once that organic active dry yeast doesn’t work as well… but that was in pairs and I’m not sure I will trust a Parisian. If you could give any tips, I’d really like to produce a nice fluffy, crusty Italian bread like shown in the pictures.
Chelsea, most of the rise should come before it ever goes into the oven.
With “quickbreads”, meaning biscuits or anything else made using baking powder or baking soda (so this technically includes cake … yes, cake is a bread) all the rise happens while baking due to chemical processes.
With yeast breads, most of the rise comes from a live culture reproducing, giving off gases which are trapped by the gluten in the wheat. They get a little “oven spring” as the heat causes these pockets of gas to expand, but the yeast has already died by that point and stopped producing more gas.
Yes, I know. The bread did rise during the process, it did just as the directions said… though I did notice that it didn’t double in size, despite given the allotted time. I could even see air bubbles in what was supposed to be the crust. The bread that I ended up with, tasted very good, but it was more the consistency of a pretzel, according to my roommate who loved it and likes that type of bread.
I love fresh bread! good stuff!
So easy~~LOVE IT! We added fennel seed to the bread! OMG!!!!!
used your recipe for italian bread it worked just great – delicious, I will continue to use it,perhaps with just one teaspoon of sugar also adding rosemary.
many thanks
Sean
Amoroso’s! I miss them so much here in Texas….
I am trying this recipe now. The dough is rising. My question is, can you freeze this dough? I may have too much and don’t want to waste it.
Cathy, I hope I’m not too late — though it looks like I am. If I were going to freeze it, I’d do it before the second rise. Then you can let it do the second rise while it’s defrosting.
In fact, you know what? I should do that.
Thanks Drew. You’re not too late. I didn’t have any left to freeze after all. It’s came out really great and my husband loves it.
I’ve tried this recipe a couple times today but the dough is never thick enough to knead, it’s more like mixing. It doesn’t hold form when I try to shape it either (after the oiled bowl/plastic wrap step).
Any suggestions? I’m obviously doing something wrong, I just can’t figure out what.
Dough can be really sensitive to humidity. If it’s not holding it’s shape before it rises, knead in a little more flour.
Fantastic Recipe i followed the directions as stated, and the bread turned out wonderful, however i only fully backed 2 rolls for my wife and i to have with our home made Osso Buco i half backed the other rolls and froze them, re backed then about a week later and the result was almost the same… less rise but texture was great, i also added some dried garlic and ground fennel seed, YUM! id say that you need to proof the yeast its critical, well i found its critical when making pizza dough, well it is for my nonna’s pizza dough. give it a go folks is very simple and easy to do. make sure you knead the bread well tho you need that soft smooth feel to it.
I spent 3 hrs last nite with the “improved” recipe card version, mostly trying to disentangle myself from the glue-like dough. Every time I tried to remove the plastic wrap I was left with flooop. It went in the garbage at 1 am. I noticed the card was different from the site instructions, so I have now spent another 1.5 hrs trying to get past the first step. I bought the yeast yesterday, it expires in 2012. I measured the water temp with a thermometer. In the 5 seconds between putting the 1/4 cup water into the bowl & opening the yeast pkg, the temp had gone down 5 degrees, so I realized keeping it the right temp long enough for it to prove was going to be tough. My house temp is 80 since I shut off the a/c, and placed the bowl on a cookie sheet that was on top of a still-warm burner. No luck after 45 min. Now I have my oven on warm, the door ajar, and the yeast water balanced on top of a pan & counter weighted with a pot so it doesn’t fall. If this one winds up in the garbage, too, at least all I lost was a pkg of yeast. How do I keep the water warm enough?
Diedre, that sounds horrible. So sorry it’s not working.
My best guess for the temperature is that you’re trying to proof in a metal bowl. The metal acts as a heat sink — like the fins in a car radiator — and draw the heat out.
If you want to proof in the same metal bowl you’re going to mix in, rinse the bowl in hot water first so it doesn’t draw all the heat out of the water.
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