hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com
with scotch regazane that's right i am very excited to be
sharing my first attempt ever for this incredibly unique and delicious
sicilian stuffed flatbread which i received a request to do not too
long ago from one of our sicilian american viewers
although it wasn't really so much a request as much as an offer i couldn't
refuse but anyway i gave it a try and for a
first attempt i was thrilled with how this came out so with that let's go
ahead and get started with what's a very very simple semolina
dough and for that we will start with some
very warm water and then to that we will sprinkle over just one teaspoon of dry
active yeast and then as usual we will let that sit
for about 10 minutes or so just to give that yeast a little head
start and make sure it's alive and while we're waiting we can take a
look at the flour we're going to use for this which as i mentioned is going to be
semolina which i believe is more commonly used to
make pasta than it is bread and as you can see this has a much more
golden look than regular white flour plus the texture's not nearly as fine so
it almost looks more like cornmeal than it does flour
and yes you should be able to find that fairly easily at any large decent
supermarket and then what we'll do once we've let
our yeast in the water for about 10 minutes
is go ahead and drizzle in a little bit of olive oil or preferably sicilian if
you can swing it at which point we will dump in our
semolina as well as a little bit of salt and we'll start mixing and stirring
together with our fingertips to first determine if we need a little
more water which i decided i did so i went ahead
and splashed in a little more and then continued mixing and the reason
we want to start out kind of dry and then add more if we need is because
this is not supposed to be a very wet and sticky dough
okay this dough is going to be a lot stiffer and firmer than we're normally
used to but anyway we will keep working that
dough until eventually it all comes together into a fairly firm ball we're
able to knead and just as soon as that happens we'll
go ahead and transfer that to our work surface
where we will need this for about five minutes or so
and i'm guessing it was the semolina flour but even after about five minutes
of kneading it did not become super smooth
all right i think the texture is going to be much closer to a pasta dough than
a bread dough but anyway for the initial kneading i
thought i was fine and then what we'll do at this point is
go ahead and cover that with our bowl and we'll let it rest for about 30
minutes before we give it a second knead so that's exactly what i did and after
about 30 minutes there was a little bit of a slight rise to it
and i grabbed it and kneaded it for another five minutes or so
before shaping it into a ball and then dividing it into
two pieces and i believe there's two ways you can do this step
i think some people divide the dough in half and then need these little balls
for five minutes or you can do it like i did and need the
whole thing for five minutes and then divide in two
but either way once we have two portions we want to try to form those into a nice
smooth ball shape and to help me do that because this was
feeling a little bit dry i went ahead and wet my fingers with some nice cold
fresh water which did seem to help smooth out that
surface a little bit and then what we'll do once those are formed
is transfer those onto a heavy semolina dusted kitchen towel
and then once placed down we'll sprinkle some more over the top
at which point we will fold the towel over and we'll kind of fold over and
tuck in the edges so they're all nice and cozy and then
once we have those tucked in we're going to let them rise for about
two hours or until they double in size or at least close to it and after about
two hours or so this is what mine look like
right they had puffed up nicely and finally did feel kind of soft and supple
and then what we'll do at this point is take one of our portions and roll it out
nice and thin using just enough extra semolina so it
won't stick and apparently the key is here to get
this as thin as you can which i thought i did a pretty good job
of doing but some of the sicilian grandmas i watched
got it a lot thinner than i did and you could pretty much see through it
although in fairness i'm using a rolling pin and they were actually using these
thinner broomsticks which i think probably makes it a little
bit easier but anyway the point is get it at least as thin as this
and once we're done rolling and shaping and stretching it is time to spread over
some sauce and top with some cheese and what i went
with here is just a basic standard pizza sauce
that i had added a whole bunch of chopped basil to and i think it's kind
of important here not to spread over too much sauce
okay all we want here is a thin layer going almost but not quite all the way
to the edges and then one sauce will go ahead and top
this with some cheese and since i didn't have access to the authentic sicilian
style cheese they use which i forget the name of or i'm just
afraid to pronounce it or both i'm going to use a nice aged
provolone but what also could work as long as it's
low moisture would be like half mozzarella and half grated pecorino
romano cheese or you know what just use whatever
cheese you want i mean you are after all the chachi
of your scotchie and as long as you don't use too much it should be fine
and then what we'll do once that's been cheesed is fold the two longer sides in
towards the middle so that they sort of meet in the center
and we'll give that a very very light pressing
at which point we'll repeat our saucing and cheesing step and because we're
going to fold in both ends towards the middle
i'm going to leave that area in the center cheeseless
and like i said we will fold both ends towards the middle
just like we did with the first fold only from the opposite sides
and that's it to finish this we'll apply one more thin layer of sauce
but because i'm going to be folding half over the top i'm just going to put the
cheese on one side and please fight the temptation to be
too generous with your toppings as i think having these overstuffed
would be one of the few ways to screw these up
since they might not get cooked all the way through and then once the last of my
toppings was on i finished by folding the other side
over the top which in hindsight should have come all the way over the top
where the edge was actually touching the table so i'm definitely going to have to
practice my folding since i think i made this a little too
compact and high but anyway i pressed on and speaking of pressing as i
transferred this onto a cornmeal lined baking sheet
i sort of tried to press and push that side down a little more
so maybe that it would seal a little better near the bottom but at the same
time i didn't really want to crush this and press it too much
so at a certain point i stopped and just decided to hope for the best
and i grabbed that pan and transferred it into the center of a very very hot
500 degree oven for about 16-18 minutes or until very
very well browned and i was not exactly sure if this
looked right but i did know it looked delicious
and as i turned it around for a little 360 viewing you can see what i was
saying about not having that last fold come all the way over the top
so it's probably sitting up a little too high at least compared to the pictures
i've seen but then again i've seen this folded in
like a half a dozen different ways so who knows maybe i accidentally did it
away some people do it on purpose in any event we'll let that sit and cool
for about 15 minutes before transferring that onto a cutting board and slicing in
and as i did that it sure sounded right
and i was sort of thinking at this point maybe my less than perfect folding
technique turned out to be an advantage since that
top crust was nice and crispy and i have to admit i was very happy
with how this looked but anyway looks aside it was time to go in for a taste
which really was nothing short of incredible all right what we have here
is a very familiar pizza-like flavor profile
but the delivery system is unlike anything you've ever experienced
right the outside crust and edges are crispy and crunchy while that saucy and
cheesy bread dough in the center is much closer to a pasta and texture so
while this is vaguely similar to a lot of things
it is really unlike anything else just very unique and unusual in the best
possible way so i found that first piece very easy to
eat and i went ahead and cut a couple more slices
and then did a little bit of food styling with the tip of the knife so i
could position that basil since i am contractually obligated to
take some pictures and after those i continued eating and
analyzing and because we roll the dough so thin
and the inside is so moist with that cheese and sauce
i was really afraid that bread wasn't going to cook and it was going to be
kind of raw and doughy but you know what it really wasn't even
though it was hard to see here it was fully cooked
and even though this extremely minimalist approach with the ingredients
turned out so well i don't see why you couldn't sneak a
little bit of meat in here okay as long as it was thinly sliced
or if you're using something like sausage finely crumbled so this is
definitely something that would be a lot of fun to experiment with
and believe me i will be but having said that this would just
the sausage cheese was fantastic and after enjoying a few slices
the best description i can come up with is this was really like a crispy
flatbread stuffed with lasagna which sounds kind
of crazy but that's really sort of what this was
so don't be surprised next year when you see a video for something called lasagna
bread based on this recipe so stay tuned for
that but in the meantime i really do hope you
give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the
ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more
info as usual and as always enjoy
you