(Pão)
Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Jean Anderson's book Process This!. Anderson also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page.
To read more about Anderson and Portuguese cuisine, click here.
What I wanted to do here was turn the food processor into a bread machine, that is, to see if I could proof the yeast, mix and knead the dough, even let it rise in the processor. I'm pleased to say that it worked perfectly. I don't recommend this technique for bigger batches of yeast dough, for more complex recipes, and certainly not for wimpy food processors with small work bowls (you need at least an 11-cup capacity). For this simple five-ingredient loaf, however, a big, powerful machine does it all. This "daily bread" of Portugal is both crusty and chewy thanks to the steam ovens in which it's baked (I bake my bread at very high temperature over a shallow pan of water). Because Portuguese flours are milled of hard wheat, I've fortified our softer-wheat all-purpose flour with semolina and find the texture exactly right. This dough is unusually stiff and for that reason I use the metal chopping blade throughout — the stubby dough blade merely spins the dough against the sides of the work bowl. I also use high-speed churning throughout (the ON button) instead of a "dough mode" because it does a better job of developing the gluten (wheat protein) that forms the framework of this bread.
•"A big, heavy-duty food processor will make easy work of this chewy, stiff dough," says Anderson. Be sure yours is up to the task before you embark on this recipe, and feel free to divide the dough in half if your work bowl has less than an 11-cup capacity.
•The most important thing to bear in mind when making bread in a food processor is that the machine can overheat and kill the yeast. Avoid this by pulsing the dough in stages rather than just pressing the "on" button. If you're concerned, touch the dough — if it feels quite warm, let it rest for a few minutes before you process it any more.
•For an authentic, chewy crust, the dough should be blasted with heat as soon as it's put in the oven. To ensure that your oven is hot enough, start preheating it at least 20 minutes before you bake.
•"Bread really is the staff of life in Portugal," says Anderson, "and economic Portuguese cooks have devised numerous recipes to use up every last crumb. Stale pão is perfect for açorda de mariscos, a dry bread and shellfish soup into which eggs are stirred just before serving." Anderson's book The Food of Portugal has a recipe for this, as well as for sopa dourada, a sweet bread pudding.
