Savoury Home Baking Sicilian Style
A Sicilian Lifestyle BlogThings aren’t exactly what we expected in 2020 and the start of 2021 too. Most people haven’t been able to spend time with loved ones and sit together at the dinner table but, there has always been one thing that has brought our family together through this challenging time, and that’s sharing recipes with each other.
We couldn’t have our Christmas and New Year together this year but instead all us three sisters were in our own homes and our parents in theirs. We spoke, and video called regularly, but mostly we sent lots of photos of the food we were cooking and baking, Dad in particular.
The period during Christmas and New Year’s, you know that time where you don’t even know what day it is and you feel like you’re stuck in a continuous food and prosecco coma! Well, it wasn’t quite like that this year, but we did find ourselves stuck on what to cook.
We were all self-isolating and were limited on what was in the fridge and inspiration until Dad sent us an image of this delicious looking pizza he had baked for dinner. The dough had risen beautifully, and once cooked, it was so light and airy with a deep pan pizza/focaccia vibe going on; it was Dad’s Sfincione!
Fortunately, we had sent Mum & Dad a Strazzanti pantry essential Il Piccolo Pacchetto for Christmas as well as one to all us sisters to keep us stocked up over the holidays. And so we all had the ingredients at home to make Dad’s Sfincione recipe.
Now Emilia, being the Chef that she is let her dough rise slowly in the fridge overnight which had a much lighter aeriated finish and texture to the dough. Dad made his dough in the morning so the dough gently proved for hours before baking in the oven. Whereas Nina & Sofia left it a little last minute so had to cheat and put their dough in the oven at the lowest possible temperature to help speed up the process.
We all had a mixture of flours hanging about too, you know when you look in your cupboard, and you have one bag half full of one flour type, another a quarter filled of something else and one… who knows how long it’s been open in there for and which flour is inside the bag!
So, as well as our proving techniques all varying, the flour types and ratios of our dough mix did too. Emilia used 100% Semolina Rimacinata (that’s all she had), Nina used 50% strong bread flour & 50% 00 flour, Sofia used 100% 00 flour and Dad used 50% 00 flour & 50% Semolina Rimacinata.
So here is our Sfincione recipe and we hope you can share this with your family too – just tag us on @strazzanti_co