Cuban Bread Recipe - How to Make Cuban Bread for Cubano Sandwiches

Hi, I'm chef john from foodwishes.com with Cuban

bread

, that's right, I have two very good reasons for making this video, first of all, it's been a while since we made a loaf of

bread

and this is definitely one of the World's greatest. breads, but also, and perhaps most importantly, you can't

make

a proper Cuban sandwich without authentic bread or at least as close to cubes and bread as possible, so that's ultimately where we're headed with this, But in the meantime, let's move on. and we're going to start with the starter and for that we're going to need some warm water to which we're going to add some active dry yeast and some all-purpose flour and then we're going to go ahead and take a whisk and mix that until it's smooth and then what we're going to do once it's mixed is go ahead and wrap it up and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

Okay, Cuban bread is unique and the yeast is introduced in two ways with the starter. We're making now and more active dry yeast when we

make

the dough, so keep that in mind, if you want this bread today, you have to make the starter yesterday, so like I said, we're going to wrap it and put it in the refrigerator overnight. and the next day you should have something that looks like this, it will be a little bubbly and will have some scary liquid floating on top, but don't worry, just unwrap it and give it a whisk and that starter.

Now it's ready to be added to our dough at the right time, which is not now, so we'll set it aside and move on to the rest of the dough ingredients, which will start with our second edition of yeast, so we'll add a little . of that into a mixing bowl as well as some white sugar and then of course to activate the yeast we're going to need some warm water and if you want and your yeast is relatively new you can continue with the rest of ingredients, but I'm old school, not to mention a little paranoid, so I generally like to wait about 10 or 15 minutes to make sure my yeast is alive and if you see bubbles and foam forming on the surface, it is and Then once we have determined that our active dry yeast is in fact active, we will continue to add a little bit of lard which as you know is nothing more than rendered pork fat and we will continue to add that to our bowl along with a little bit of salt and we'll also add a little bit of flour, but not all, we'll just add about a cup and then we'll take a wooden spoon or a spatula and mix everything together and I'm sure if you can't find or I don't want to use lard, you can substitute it with things like butter or oil.

I mean, after all, you're the ricky ricardo on whether to use lardo, but for some reason it's not the same without lard, so try to find some or make some. a little bit, but anyway we're going to go ahead and mix in that first edition of flour and stir it until we have a very, very wet and sticky dough and then once that's achieved we can continue adding almost all of our starter, apparently We're supposed to save a little bit to make a new starter, but I'll mention it in the blog post anyway, for now we'll finish this off by adding almost all of the rest of the flour and we'll go ahead and grab our wooden spoon. and continue mixing that and by the way, the reason we never want you to put in all the flour at once is because we don't know exactly how much we're going to need.

Well, bread is not an exact science. why it's so fun, so what we're going to do is add everything in, but save about half a cup and add it as we need it, if we need it, okay, I hope it's not confusing, there was a lot of need in that sentence, but anyway. What we will do is add almost all of the flour except half a cup and we will mix it with our spoon until it becomes too bothersome to continue, at which point we will transfer this to our work surface and continue kneading with our hands and yes, today I will take one for the team and I won't be using my stand mixer so I can do this with my hands and remind you of a lot of key bread making tips as we go and the best and most important tip I already gave you don't add all the flour at once because although liquid can be added to a dough that is too dry, it is a thousand times easier to add flour to a wet dough so what we will do is knead it as shown until it comes together and while kneading it we are feeling it and What we feel is that the dough becomes too sticky and we will know it because it will start to stick to the table or to our hands, so in the end we knead and continue kneading until it comes out perfect or we have to add a little more flour which is what I am doing here so we'll just stop and sprinkle a little more flour and continue to repeat that step if necessary until we're completely satisfied with how our dough feels and for virtually all breads what we're looking for is a dough that's nice and soft and flexible with just a little bit of stickiness on the surface, okay, not sticky, just a little sticky and it should definitely have some give too.

Just when we push it in with our fingers it should go back a little bit, if those depressions just stay where they are and don't come back at all we need a little more and then once we determine what our dough looks like and it feels perfect we'll go ahead and do it. we'll place it in a container and cover the surface with a little oil so it doesn't dry out, at which point I like to cover it with a barely damp towel and transfer it to some kind of warm place I just use my oven off no, this won't work on a heated oven and what we will do is let it rise for about two hours or so or until it at least doubles in size and, hopefully, looks like this and Of course, as tradition dictates, you should prick it with your finger a couple times because it feels so good and then what we're going to do at this point is transfer our risen dough to a lightly floured surface and press it with lightly floured hands. kind of a square rectangle and we always do this for the same two reasons number one to get the air out and two to form some kind of shape that's easy to cut into portions and since I'm making two loaves here I'm going to go ahead and divide it in half, although I probably should have gone the long way, but now it's too late, I probably shouldn't even imagine anything and then I'll press and pull each of them into some sort of rectangle shape, maybe about 12 inches long or so and then , once we've pressed it into a rectangular shape of that size, we're just going to roll it up nice and tight to form a relatively thin long loaf and then one last move before transferring it to our baking sheet would be to press it down a little bit, okay , this is optional, but if you're making

sandwiches

with this, it's highly recommended, so we'll flatten it out a little before transferring it to some kind of cornmeal-lined baking sheet and by the way, I was trying one of these non-stick pans and that's why I'm not using parchment, you should probably do that and then once we've successfully prepared our loaves, we'll go ahead and sprinkle the tops with flour before covering them with a light, dry towel. and then what we have to do before we bake this is let it rise for about an hour and a half to two hours or until those loaves have about doubled in size and look like this so far so good, but we still have one critical one left.

What we need to do before we bake them, what we need to do is take a very sharp knife or a razor blade and make a cut in the center of our bread about a quarter of an inch deep and that will allow the crust to expand and burst. open it while it's baking which will help us achieve the right texture and by the way for real Cuban bread this is not done with a knife it's okay believe it or not a palm cane is actually placed in the center to divide the bread. but since I had just finished the saw palmetto, I just cut it with a knife and last but not least, before we bake them, we need to spray them with a little bit of water, okay, a very light mist all over the surface that , as you can see, We know that's going to help form our crust and then once our loaves have been successfully divided and basted, we can go ahead and transfer them to a preheated 400 degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes and if You want to rotate those two pans in half, not a bad idea, but we're still going to bake them at 400 for about 20 minutes or so or until they turn a beautiful golden brown and hopefully look like this so they look almost perfect and the flattened bottom should be well browned and as usual.

I'm going to have to ask you not to cut this bread too hot. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool before cutting. As hard as it was, I let mine cool before cutting it to see how we did and we're hoping to see two things that indicate we did this right, first we should have a paper thin, crispy, very flaky crust surrounding an interior very tender, very light, very airy and that's exactly what we had here and to celebrate I'm going to have another piece with a little butter and I'm sure there are many who say that this is the best way to eat this bread, but It's only second best for me, the ultimate use of this bread is to make Cuban

sandwiches

which, as I mentioned in the introduction is what we're going to do with this next, in fact, let me give you a little preview.

Okay, that's enough, so stay tuned for what I think is one of the best sandwiches in the world, but in the meantime, I really hope you try this amazing bread soon, so visit foodwishes.com for all the quantities of ingredients and more information, as always, and as always, enjoy.