Golden Semolina Torpedo (Altamura)

This is a delicious bread with a lovely golden colour, a bouncy/chewy crumb and a crisp crust.

It’s also one of the oddest breads I’ve ever made. It’s a lean dough, made entirely of durum semolina flour with water, yeast and salt. The author recommends kneading by hand to avoid overworking the gluten. The dough ends up very soft and silky, but also quite slack, causing me great difficulty with the shaping….my loaves look more like baguettes than torpedos :). I was supposed to slash the loaves while they were still underproofed…I missed the boat on that one, but was happy that they didn’t fall as a result of over-proofing them.

Having never had this bread before, I don’t know if mine came out correctly. What I do know is that it’s very different in taste, texture and appearance from other lean breads made with bread flour, but equally delicious.