I love food competitions and stretching my creative brain to include competition criteria, as it’s something that stretches me out of my comfort zone. Normally. The Giovanni Rana competition isn’t a huge stretch, since pasta isn’t a novelty in our home. Quite the opposite – it’s something we have loads of! What we don’t normally treat ourselves to, however, is pasta sauces. When I saw the Giovani Rana sauces, I decided that I had to try something that incorporated pasta sauces.
One of our favourite Italian food combinations is bread and oil (and vinegar). It brings to mind memories of late afternoons relaxing on the banks of the Arno river in Florence, Italy, dipping fresh breads from Mercato Centrale and sipping light red wines.
I decided to play with the breads and pasta sauces from Giovanni Rana, and see what I could come up with.
I used my Thermomix for both of these recipes, but you can choose any recipe or method you prefer, and add the ‘toppings’ to the finished product. The two breads here are Pesto and Mozzarella Foccassia, and Bolognese Rosemary Bread. 
The Focaccia Bread I used was from the basic Every Day Cookbook. This is the recipe:
- 500g bakers flour
- 2 teaspoons of dry yeast (or 1 sachet)
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- A pinch of sugar
- 30g olive oil
- 400g warm water
- Sea Salt
- Giovanni Rana Pesto Sauce
- Capers
- Mozzarella
- Place water, oil, sugar, yeast, flour and salt into bowl and mix at speed 6 for 20 seconds.
- Knead for 2 minutes on Interval speed
- Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough into the bowl. This is a very wet dough. Very wet.
- Leave to rise for at least an hour, till it’s doubled in size.
- Preheat oven to 220c
- Remove from bowl and shape onto a baking tray or stone bake tray. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
- Place in oven and cook for 10 – 15 minutes. Without removing from the oven, sprinkle with water, then cook for a further 10 – 15 mins or until golden.
- Tear the mozzarella and spread over the hot focaccia. Drizzle the Giovanni Rana Pesto sauce over and top with capers. Make sure to add toppings to hot foccaccia so that it all sort melts onto and into the bread.
- Add the ingredients to a bowl and mix using an electric beater until well mixed.
- Knead for 20 minutes by hand, or 15 minutes with a bread hook.
- Follow the same rising and resting instructions as above.
- Follow the topping instructions as above.
The Giovanni Rana Pesto is quite salty, with a very sweet ending, it’s delicious and perfectly suitable for this bread.
The next bread is this Rosemary & Honey bread recipe, adapted to make my Italian Style Bolognese Bread.
Follow the instructions as written out up to and including step 4, but before twisting the bread, make a groove down the centre of each ‘braid’ and fill with sauce.
The Bolognese sauce from Giovanni Rana is ideal as it is quite firm out the tub and wont run all over. Gently ‘close’ the dough over the filling, and then ‘plait’ the bread as per the recipe.
Leave it to rise, and follow the Rosemary & Honey bread recipe again from step 6.
Your finished bread should look something like the one above.
Tear of a piece off each bread, serve with some salad, and have a lovely meal together – maybe not on the Arno, but all the Italian flavours in one meal, simply can’t go wrong.
*Giovanni Rana sent me £5 worth of vouchers to buy and try some of their products. We also bought a RAVIOLI SPINACI E RICOTTA filled pasta for dinner one evening, which took about four minutes to prepare – bonus on an ‘I’m not cooking tonight’! dinner. Opinions, thoughts and recipes are my own, except where otherwise stated.