Not everything I make is a resounding success.  I frequently try recipes and end up throwing them out or pretending they never happened while trying to come up with something better.  This state of mind leaves me one of two ways, I am either sobbing and trying to figure out why I failed or I feel like a totally mediocre cook who can’t do anything right.  Though, sometimes I am trying a new recipe and it just falls flat, like in the case of this bread.  It looks tasty right – the cheese is golden and crispy on top and the whole thing is a lovely golden brown?  It’s not.  It’s dense and chewy and sits in your belly like a bowling ball, just making you feel full but not satisfied in terms of flavor or texture.

I’ve had semolina flour sitting on my shelf for quite a while now, initially it was there as a pasta making addition but more and more I’ve been coming across semolina breads.  These breads, when I buy them, are fluffy and airy – like a baguette or ciabatta but with a little more texture to the crumb and I am a  fan.  So one day last week I decided to try it out, make my own semolina bread.  So I looked in all of my cookbooks, I looked on the internet – I looked everywhere and found one recipe for semolina bread.  It was a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website and it only called for semolina flour, so I was wary of it but went for it.

The dough was a cinch and mixed up in just a few minutes, it rose well, and then rose well after shaping – but in terms of flavor it was flat and disappointing.  Will I try semolina bread again?, of course, I’m nothing if not persistent.  Will I use this recipe again, no.  It needs work – too much semolina flour created a dense bread that weighed heavily and didn’t do either my baking skills or the bread any justice.  I’ll definitely be trying semolina flour again, and maybe then I’ll find a recipe worthy of sharing.  In the meantime – here are some pictures of this bread.