What is Crocodile Bread?

Today’s Featured Bake

I get a lot of questions from people as to what exactly is Crocodile Bread. Here is some information on where it came from and what goes into it.

I would sum it up by calling it a rustic Italian bread.

Crocodile Bread is a high hydration (wet) dough that is made with a starter called a poolish. This is a pre-ferment that is similar to a sourdough starter except that a poolish uses commercial yeast vs natural/wild yeast that a sourdough starter uses. A poolish is also ready to use within hours instead of the weeks it may take to get your sourdough starter well established. Another difference is that with a poolish you make and use the whole amount in your recipe, while with sourdough you save some of your starter and feed it for the next use. Using a poolish will help improve flavor and texture of your bread. It won't have as strong of a sourdough flavor but it does give you a very pleasant flavor profile.

Coccodrillo (Crocodile) Bread was originally invented by a baker in Rome. From what I've found reading, the baker credited with it's creation is Gianfranco Anelli. I've heard different tellings about when the original baker created this bread and range anywhere from 45-50 years ago. You can find many variations of the recipe floating around from other bakers online and in cookbooks.

If you are local to me, some of you may remember back many years ago when Holly at Lucky Dog used to bake Crocodile Bread. It was a popular loaf among people when the store was open and the first time I ever heard about Crocodile Bread.

Like many bakers do, I made my own recipe variation of this bread. It took quite a bit of time to get the results I wanted from flavor to making it user friendly for me while multi tasking in the kitchen. Let's just say our pigs and chickens ate well for awhile as I tried out various approaches and ingredient ratios. My family and friends were also test subjects and their feedback helped me arrive at the recipe I use now.

I'm actually still in the process of evolving my recipe of this classic Italian bread. My current recipe has a great outcome and is delicious but I still want to work on improving the flavor and texture just a bit more. 

I absolutely love experimenting and finding new ways to create while putting my own spin on something.

The following are not recipes I use exactly, as I have created my own take on it but the concept is similar. There are quite a few other recipe variations out there as well.

If you are more of a viewer here is a YouTube link of someone else's take.

https://youtu.be/pwKh9ZsBqPY?si=xEV8qdwGDl58-A3q

If you are more of a reader here is a blog post.

https://cookiebakerlynn.blogspot.com/2008/03/crikey.html?m=1