Sacaduros

Each month, Emma and I pull out our cookbooks and look for a recipe - usually bread - that will force us to practice some long-forgotten skill we acquired in school. It's a great chance for us to compare notes, talk techniques, and learn together.

This month, I picked a recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible: Sacaduros. According to Rose, 'these unusual little rolls are my very favorite.' She continues: 'Each is filled with a tiny cube of butter and fleur de sel, then the dough is pinched and flded six times to form a tidy little bundle. Each little bun is inverted into a bed of flour, and during baking, the dough unfolds a little, forming irregular petals and a beautiful contrast of golden dough against the powdery white sections where the flour has adhered. The crust is crunchy, the crumb soft and moist, and in the center is the tiny treat of a special filling.'

After reading the recipe several times, we decided this was almost more of a technique challenge than a composition one - meaning we wouldn't really be challenged by the dough itself, only the way it's put together. You see, I searched for sacaduros online and didn't find much except for a few photos and a mention on Rose's site where she refers to them as 'the most challenging bread in the book.' Game on.

The dough for the sacaduros is a basic rustic white - in fact the recipe in the book says to use 3/4 of Rose's Basic Hearth Bread dough, so I substituted a similar dough using my rhubarb sourdough starter. Any rustic white dough should work. After spending the night rising in the fridge, I prepped everything for the next step: forming the rolls.

To do this, have a plate of flour handy, small cubes of butter (about the size of a bouillon cube), fleur de sel (or an equivalent premium salt, although Kosher would really work just fine), and a parchment paper-lined sheet. The oven had been warming for nearly an hour, and the pan of water on the lower rack was hot and steamy. It was time.

I formed the dough into balls about 1+1/2 ounces, and then one at a time flattened them into disks with a bulging center (like a flying saucer). I placed a cube of butter in the center, and then a pinch of salt on each. Then, I carefully pulled the top and bottom wings over the cube and pinched them together. I rotated it 90 degrees and repeated the steps for the next wings. I did it twice more until all the wings were pinched on top of the little package. Immediately, I placed the dough fold-side-down in the flour and then upright on the baking sheet, and then turned my attention to the remaining dozen-or so balls. I had to work quickly.

They baked 5 minutes at 475 before I lowered the temperature to 400 and baked them for another 10 - 15 minutes until the internal temperature reached 190.

A few things to note:

• I used both unsalted cow's milk butter and Meyenberg goat milk butter, just for variety. I couldn't really tell the difference in the finished product, but they were awfully yummy.
• Resist the urge to over-butter. When the rolls open, the butter melts out and may burn on the sheet. I had butter all over my sheet and the bottoms of the rolls might have cooked a little bit in the melted butter. Not like it tasted bad, but that wasn't the point.
• You might flour the dough before pulling and folding the wings to prevent it from sticking to itself. And if the dough gets too warm, it'll just meld with the other pieces it's stuck to, preventing it from blooming. That happened on most of my rolls, even though I was working really fast.
• After forming, I stuck a few of the rolls into the freezer to see how they bake next time. They might not bloom correctly, but it would be a little faster. It's an experiment, anyway.

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