Here in Portland, Oregon where Sew4Home lives, if you hang out in the greater Metro area for any length of time at all, you eventually meet an Amato. This wonderful Italian clan immigrated to the city in the late 1800s and they've been here ever since, expanding exponentially with each passing year. I met 'my Amato' in the 1980s and we remain good friends to this day. So, when Sew4Home embarked on our Italiano Kitchen series, I knew exactly who to turn to for an authentic Italian recipe: my pal, Terry. He came through with flying colors (those colors being Italy's green, white and red), getting permission for us to share his Aunt Sarah's famous Sicilian bread with oil and cheese. Mangiare e gustare!

Sarah Amato was born Sarah Cacicia (shown center above) in Portland in 1916, one of five sisters who grew-up in the Italian neighborhood of Southeast Portland. She married into the famous Amato clan in 1936. In her nineties now, Sarah lives with her daughter, Karen (one of three daughters) and is still baking the recipes handed down by her mother, Maria, including this delicious one.

Ingredients

• 4 cups white flour
• 1 pkg. Fleischmann's Rapid Rise Yeast
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1⅓ cup water (hotter than lukewarm)
• ¼ - ½ cup sesame seeds
• About a ¼ cup oil (Sarah prefers corn oil over olive oil for this recipe)
• Fresh oregano, finely chopped
• Ground black pepper
• Grated Romano cheese plus a few small chunks of Romano cheese

Recipe

1. Put flour in a big bowl (Sarah likes to use a large Pyrex bowl).
2. Make a small crater in the middle of the flour.
3. Put yeast, salt and sugar in the crater.
4. Pour the water into crater and mix around with fingers until yeast dissolves.
5. Knead dough about 5-6 minutes, working it into a nice round ball. Lift the dough and pour a drop or two of oil into the bowl and rub the oil around on the bottom of the bowl. Set the dough back in the bowl, smearing the oil onto the round ball of dough.
6. Cover the bowl with foil (Sarah used a baby blanket before foil came on the scene). Put the bowl in a warm place to rise. If it's winter, turn on the oven to 200° to warm up, then turn it off and put the bread into the barely-warm oven to rise.
7. Let the dough rise for about an hour or until it doubles in size.
8. Lightly mix it and knead it a time or two.
9. Re-cover the bowl and let it rise to double the size again (about another hour).
10. When the dough looks like it's finished rising, put it onto a cutting board or another smooth and dry surface to shape the loaves.
11. The dough should not be sticky, so don't put any extra flour on the surface. With this recipe, you'll have enough dough to make two regular-sized loaves in baking dishes, or one long loaf in an extra-long baking dish, or two oval-shaped loaves on a cookie sheet (that's the option we chose), or three small rounded loaves on a cookie sheet (Sarah call these'"poo-bahs').
12. Pour some sesame seeds on the work surface and gently roll the dough around in the seeds (Sarah likes to use lots of sesame seeds). Cut some decorative slits diagonally across the top.
13. Put a drop of oil into the desired baking pans (no oil if you are using cookie sheets).
14. Carefully place the loaves in the pan(s) or on the sheet(s) and cover with foil. Return the loaves to a warm place to rise for the last time to the desired size (usually about 1 more hour).
15. When the loaves are the desired size, bake at 350° for approximately 30-35 minutes.
16. Toward the end of baking, remove the bread from the pan(s) and turn the loves on their sides to finish browning (check often). The finished color should be golden brown.
17. Slit the warm, right-out-of-the-oven bread in half, lengthwise.
18. Drizzle oil over each piece.
19. Sprinkle oregano, pepper and cheese over each half.
    
20. Press the halves back together until bread crunches and enjoy immediately. The picture below shows the second loaf from my recipe, which I left plain to enjoy the next morning... since the other loaf disappeared before I'd brushed the crumbs from the bread board!
    

Comments (10)

Linda Arms said:

... Wow...great memories Bob,I can relate! Sara was my great aunt, sister to my grandmother Mary. I too remember coming home to the smell of fresh bread baking, homemade sauce & meatballs! I think my grandmother enjoyed our excitement when we came home from school to see her frying meatballs...our first words,"can I have a meatball patty with homemade bread?" (and with a little sauce on the side) We could hardly stand to wait for it to be finished. I also have many memories of my Aunts cooking! I remember walking into her big kitchen to see her making homemade ravioli's - with the pasta laid out on the table, ready to be filled and cut! And all the years of her wonderful cooking at the beach...it was out for the morning walk/jog, then stop by her cabin for cookies or whatever was cooking on the stove. I think we only walked so we could stop by to eat We are blessed to have such wonderful memories and family!

November 17, 2010

Bob Boscola said:

... Being the oldest grandchild I will always have the memory of walking into my grandmother kitchen and to this day I can still remember the aroma of the bread in the oven as it was baking. When the bread was finished she would cut us a slice, the bread still steaming we would dip it in the olive oil with a little Romano cheese and a sprinkle oregano on it... And with each bite…ummm...that was pure heaven…and that was just for starters. Sometimes she would also be frying up some homemade patty sausages or meatballs that we would layer between two pieces of bread and dip it in the homemade spaghetti sauce she was making for dinner that evening. Or better yet.. the next morning at breakfast she would slice up the bread, put in the oven under the broiler, brown it, then spread some butter and homemade strawberry or raspberry jam on it…The ultimate word here is homemade… Not only could my grandmother cook but her four sisters were just as equally good as she was. The good thing about all this cooking is that it has been passed down to my mother, my sisters and now my daughter. But it does not end there, the men in our family can also cook…So the Amato clan is set for a long long time...

November 17, 2010

Carol J. Amato said:

... It is so nice to see my aunt and her recipes featured in such a beautiful way!

November 12, 2010

Carol J. Amato said:

... It's so great to see my aunt's recipes featured in such a beautiful way!

November 12, 2010

psurface said:

... My Grandma Amato ( Sarah's sister in law) also loved to cook- it was fun trying to get her recipes into measurements so we could make them. Totally brought that memory back when the original recipe said "a little"- it was all done by taste, smell and they just had that special way to make it taste perfect.

October 31, 2010

Liz Johnson, Editor, Sew4Home said:

... Yes ... about a 1/4 cup... the original recipe said "a little" ...

October 30, 2010

laceandbits said:

... 1/4 *cup* oil? I'm guessing that's what it must be but.....

October 30, 2010

Sarah V. said:

... I didn't know you guys were in Portland either! That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (If not cold and drizzly as the weather....)

October 30, 2010

Msimmons said:

... WOW! My grandmother is an Amato, we live in Portland too. Pretty sure they are related. Those Amato's...they are the BEST in many ways, including their cooking Didn't realize Sew4Home is out of Portland, I visit this blog daily. Thanks for all the great tutorials.

October 29, 2010

Jamie said:

... Yum! Sounds delicious!

October 29, 2010

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