The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Venezuelan · Bread

Pan de Jamón

  • Advanced
  • 45 min
  • roughly 4 of 4 for cost

rich · sweet-edged · briny · smoky Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners, on a drift of smoke.

Ingredients

  • 500 g strong white bread flour
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 60 g sugar
  • 10 g fine salt
  • 250 ml warm whole milk
  • 1 egg, plus 1 for glazing
  • 70 g soft butter
  • 400 g thinly sliced smoked cooked ham
  • 150 g streaky bacon rashers
  • 120 g green olives stuffed with pepper, halved
  • 90 g raisins
  • 60 g papelón, dissolved in 30 ml hot water

The skills inside

Kneading doughProofing: the rise before the oven

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, salt, milk and egg to a shaggy mass, knead 10 minutes, then work in the butter piece by piece until the dough pulls a thin translucent window; prove until doubled. 10 min
  2. Roll to a rectangle roughly 35 cm by 45 cm and 5 mm thick, shingle the ham over it right to the edges, lay the bacon in stripes, and scatter the olives and raisins.
  3. Roll up tightly from the long side, keeping the ham taut and pressing air out ahead of the roll, then pinch the seam and tuck the ends underneath.
  4. Chill the log 20 minutes so the fat firms, prick it to the centre all over with a skewer, and prove it seam down only until half again in size, not doubled. 20 min
  5. Bake at 180C (350F) for 40 minutes, glazed with beaten egg at the start and with the papelón syrup only in the last 5 minutes, since that sugar would blacken over a full bake. 40 min
  6. Cool at least an hour before cutting, or the spiral drags apart under the knife.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Kneading dough 57 recipes

  • The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
  • The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
  • Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
  • Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
  • After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.

Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.

Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes

  • Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
  • The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
  • The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
  • Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
  • It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.

Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.

At the Table

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Zero-Proof
Cloudy apple juice, chilled

Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Pan de Jamón The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Venezuelan kitchen