Pan de Horno

Spanish Bread

To go with the Spanish-Style Meatballs, I will be making this Spanish-Style Bread (Pan de Horno) for my next gourmet group dinner.  It is not an earth-shattering bread.  Just a plain, white bread.  The most notable thing about it is that it has that somewhat elusive thin yet crisp crust that makes for really good sandwich rolls.

I suspect the crust is the result of working some olive oil into the flour before adding the water. The oil coats the proteins in the flour and prohibits some of the gluten development, so it  also results in a bread with a nice tender crumb (again, perfect for sandwich rolls).  But, while the oil helps to delay staling, this bread is definitely best when eaten within a few days and you'll lose that neato crust after the first day.

The recipe can be found here and you might want to halve it because it makes a lot of bread.   I ended up grinding about 1/3 of the leftover bread into bread crumbs to use later.  

This bread will probably never be the star of a meal, but it can play a very nice supporting role.  Especially supporting the insides of a sandwich.