Here are a few things alleged to be Italian.

The first thing most people think when they combine baked + Italian is pizza. OK, I'll bite. Crust & Crumb has a very versitile formula for pizza dough. It doubles as a focaccia recipe. The doughs weigh about 15 OZ. and are 12-14 inches across, pre-baked.

Before and after pictures of my version of Pizza Margherita. I added the heirloom tomatoes because I could.

The Margherita is topped with fresh tomatoe sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil. Then the carnivore emerged. Smoked mozzarella and sweet italian sausage. I have one dough left.

The pizza dough's evil twin is focaccia. This is a very basic focaccia. I "steeped" fresh rosemary and minced garlic in olive oil for a couple of hours and then brushed it on the proofed bread. Then a liberal sprinkling of kosher salt.

I don't know what happened, but This baked in about 15 minutes. The recipe said 25-30. I'm glad I checked.

It turned out OK, my best focaccia to date. It still needs work though.

I think ciabatta is second to sourdough in terms of my interest. I love the consistency of the dough. This one ia a Peter Reinhart formula. He has enhanced his Crust & Crumb formula.

His tweaking involves taking the poolish pre-ferment up to 162% up from 67% in Crust & Crumb. My tweaking involved adding 2 tbls. of olive oil and swapping milk for the water in the recipe.

I used dried porcini mushrooms and fresh shitakes. The dried mushrooms are rehydrated and added to the dough during the mixing. The fresh mushrooms are sauteed in olive oil with some minced garlic. They get added during the folding/fermenting.