Eggless Scali Bread

Scali Bread is an Italian style of bread which is long and somewhat flat loaf which is braided as much as like Challah. This bread have a soft crumb with a chewy brown crust. This bread is  made predominantly in the Boston, Massachusetts area. It was originally made by the Scali family of Boston, and is now a regional specialty. This Boston's Italian-American Community bread aka this eggless braided bread is called a Scala if its a single loaf while the multiple loaves are called Scali. This bread is definitely a prefect bread for making sandwich with any sort of filling. No Italian meal in Boston is complete without a piece of this Scali bread.

This bread asks for a starter which is prepared a day before and left out overnight. Am running this week's blogging marathon with Cuisines of USA as theme, after a fantastic chilled soup and a vegan dirty rice, i couldnt resist to bake a bread. This bread came out extremely prefect and we loved the crumb of this bread, we couldnt stop myself having this bread. Eaten with simply butter or else as accompaniment for soups or salad, trust me this bread rocks. The sesame seeds brings a fabulous aroma and nuttiness to this excellent bread.

Recipe Source: Here
Starter:
1cup All-purpose flour
1/2 cup Water
1/4tsp Instant dry yeast

Combine flour, water and yeast in a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit and rise at room temperature overnight.

Letting the starter sit for 10-12 hours is optimal. The starter should have risen and be bubbly on top.

1/3cup Lukewarm water
1/3cup Lukewarm milk
2tbsp Olive oil
1tsp Salt
2cups Flour
3tsp sesame seeds
Milk (for brushing)

Transfer your starter to large mixing bowl.

Add all of your other ingredients to the starter and mix with your hands to begin forming a dough

Knead well until the dough turns smooth and slightly sticky to the touch.

Place the dough into a large bowl and cover the dough with a dish towel and set aside to rise at room temperature atleast for two hours.

Gently punch down the dough and cut the dough into three equal portions and roll each portion into a three logs.

Let the logs sit and rest for about 10-15 minutes. Do not cover them

Roll each of the logs into ropes, brush each rope with milk and sprinkle on plenty of sesame seeds. Gently roll the ropes in any fallen seeds to get as many as possible on the dough/

Braid the ropes by tucking the ends to form a braided loaf.

Place the braided loaf on a lightly greased or sprayed baking sheet, cover with a dish towel or greased plastic wrap and allow to sit for an hour.

Pre heat the oven to 400F and bake for about 25 minutes until the bread turns brown

Let the bread cool completely and slice to enjoy.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#82