I hope you're all happy and healthy 😁

Today I want to share a recipe that I really like because it's all homemade and delicious, healthy as well! I made bruschette for dinner. I baked bread, made spicy paprika aioli, and cooked an octopus--well, two small octopuses actually, but we only ate one.

When it comes to bruschette, we're talking about crusty bread spread with olive oil and preferably quite golden brown; what you put on top depends on your taste and creativity.

In my case, I always try to include at least one buschetta with traditional ingredients as part of the dish, that is, one that has fresh tomato, mozzarella and/or parmesan cheese, and fresh basil and/or pesto, and, of course, olive oil, garlic and freshly cracked black pepper.

I made the bread from scratch; it's really crusty and easy to make, ideal to hold all the toppings. I sliced the loaves, toasted them and spread them with olive oil and garlic, then topped my bruschette with potato salad and fried octopus. For the salad, I prepared a spicy paprika aioli to which I also added freshly squeezed lemon juice and hot chili pepper.

Fortunately, we had one bottle of wine left--and we have half a bottle left 😭 But hopefully we'll fix that as soon as January and its financial slowness are gone.

Crusty Bread

This is the kind of bread that would pass for sourdough bread if you let it raise twice the time I did. It's super crusty and goes down well in the stomach.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup warm water
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tablespoon instant yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons corn flour

• enough olive oil to grease the baking pan

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First, I made the preferment to give enough organic acids and esters to the dough. This makes bread more aromatic, and it also tastes better. With the help of a hand whisk, I mixed the water, yeast, sugar, and 1/2 cup of the flour. Then I let the yeast do its work. After about half an hour, the preferment was ready.

Once the preferment was ready, I added the rest of the flour, salt, and olive oil. I kneaded it a little, 3 minutes or so, until the dough came off my fingers.

Then I let the dough rise until it tripled in size. I poked it twice, each time it grew.

Then I assembled two loaves of bread and let them rise for only half an hour, to have a more consistent crumb that would allow me to put the toppings. For this same reason I did not crack the surface of the loaves. To roll out the dough, I sift corn flour on the counter. I also sift a little on the dough, flatten it with the rolling pin and then roll it to make a bread roll.

If you want a crumb with big bubbles, just crack the surface of the bread and let the loaves rise until they are four times their size. In the photo, you can see the big bubbles that this simple dough makes.

I let them bake until they turned golden brown: it was 30 minutes at 300 degrees F. It was enough, as I was going to slice the loaves and toast them.

The bread should be cut beveled, to have a larger surface area. I was able to make bruschette of 15 cm x 10 cm. One is enough for dinner! Two for lunch 🙈

You can see the crust below.

While the bread is baking, we can prep[are the toppings 😋

Ingredients for the salad:

• 3 boiled potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 boiled carrot, peeled and diced
• fresh parsley, finely chopped
• homemade aioli (recipe below)

Ingredients for the aioli:

• 6 tablespoons freshly crushed garlic
• 1 egg + 2 yolks
• 100 ml corn oil (you can use any neutral oil)
• 50 ml olive oil
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon hot paprika
• 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
• 1 tablespoon fresh hot chili pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt

+ a fresh octopus

(I used a small one, 700 gr)

• For the caprese bruschetta, I used frozen homemade basil pesto, a scoop of soft mozzarella, fresh tomato, and fresh basil for garnish (and flavor).

• I also used olive oil and freshly crushed garlic to spread on the toasts.

• *Other ingredients for color and texture. I used some fresh parsley, corn kernels, kalamatas, ciboulette, and hot pepper strips.

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Let's Get to Work!

I boiled the unpeeled potato and carrot to avoid the extra wetness that could make the toast soggy. I put them in a pot and covered them with enough water.

I didn't add salt because I like the sweetness of the carrot and potato for this salad. I let them cook over medium to high heat until they were soft, which I could tell by poking them with a fork. Then I drained them and let them cool so I could cut them without them crumbling. Then I finely chopped a few sprigs of parsley after washing them well and letting them dry for a few minutes. I put all ingredients together in a glass bowl, mixed them well and dressed it with the aioli I had prepared.

This salad went into the fridge to wait until the time to assemble the bruschette.

To make aioli taste hot and tasting like paprika, ideal to go with octopus, I used three key ingredients:

in order to make the mixture emulsify more easily and set well, I left one of the egg whites, so I used 3 yolks plus one egg white, or what is the same, one whole egg and two yolks (it was almost half a cup of egg).

It's important that the eggs are not cold from the refrigerator or the mixture may not emulsify as desired. Some cooks say it's not relevant if your using a blender, but I learned my lesson long time ago.

The blender would do all the job, so I put all the ingredients into the glass blender, but not all at once. First, I added half the corn oil, white vinegar, lemon juice, hot and sweet paprika, and the egg.

I added the rest of the oil in a gradual stream. I prefer to do it this way because it has proved to make a firmer spread if I'm adding olive oil as well.

Once the mixture had emulsified, I added the rest of the ingredients.

I took it our of the blender glass, as it starts to set really quickly. I put the aioli in the fridge. It was going to be the dressing of the potato salad.

The last thing was cleaning and cooking the octopus so it was warm at the moment of assembling the bruschette.

To break the fibers of the octopus it's important to freeze it a couple of days before preparing it. I put it to freeze inside a bag and now I put the bag in a container with water; this way the octopus thaws keeping the cold in all its parts.

I soaked the octopuses in water with a tablespoon of salt for 5 minutes. Then I washed it by pressing the suckers a little so they released and dirt the had. I also cleaned the heads; I don't eat them but my husband does--my cats do, too--.

Then I cooked it for 30 minutes in 4 liters of boiling water with a tablespoon of salt.

Before leaving the octopus to cook, I dipped it three times in boiling water. This is done to prevent the skin from peeling off.

Then I took the octopuses out of the boiling water and let them drain before frying.

I only fried one (700 gr)and stored the smaller one (500 gr) in the freezer to use later.

Finally, Bruschette!

I made three first. The middle one, traditional. This plate measures 45 cm long x 28 cm wide, to give you an idea of the size of the bruschette.

Bruschette are a very versatile dish with good flavors and exquisite aroma (garlic, olive oil, vegetables, and your favorite ingredients). Making them from scratch takes work, but if you're wise, what you prepare in one day will save you time in the kitchen for the next 3 to 4 days.

As always, I hope you've found this post useful 😁

Bon appetite!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

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