Ciabatta

I baked two loaves of bread yesterday. I really surprised myself by how well they turned out too. A year ago, if anyone would have told me that I would become very interested in bread baking, that I would actually enjoy kneading bread by hand, that I would spend the end of 2002 and all of 2003 and hopefully all of 2004 and beyond feeding and caring for the same sourdough starter, I would have doubted them highly, and yet there I was in my kitchen Sunday evening just before bed, preparing the starter recipe for some Ciabatta bread, and loving every minute of it.

According to Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno the author’s of Ultimate Bread, Ciabatta was...

given its name because the bread resembles a well worn slipper. It is the prolonged rising and high liquid content that produce this very light bread, with its uniquely open and porous texture. An authentic Ciabatta requires a very wet dough that can be tricky to handle and must be started a day in advance. Do not be tempted to add extra flour to make the dough more manageable, and avoid over handling the dough at all costs. After its long rise, the dough must be handled with a very light touch (“like a baby,” as they say in Italy), so that all the precious air bubbles are not broken.

Okay, so I made a few mistakes, maybe I handled the dough a little too much, but being that this was my first attempt, I’m not going to get down on myself about it. I’ll be making this bread again and I definitely won’t be making those mistakes next time, I’ll be making new ones! HA, just kidding.

To make the starter I combined ¾ cups warm (not hot) water, and 3 tablespoons of milk into a bowl then sprinkled ½ teaspoon of dry yeast onto the milk/water mix. I left it for 5 minutes, then added ¼ teaspoon of honey and stirred to dissolve everything. I mixed in 1 cup of flour so that I had a loose batter, then covered the bowl with a piece of Saran Wrap and a kitchen towel and let the whole thing rise on my counter overnight. I am learning to be more Zen with this step. Last year, when I first started, I could hardly get sleep knowing that there was science happening on my kitchen counter and I’d be peeking at the starter every chance I got. This year, I went to bed and managed to not even glance in the direction of the starter as I passed it on my 47,000 nightly runs to the loo.

The next day, to make the dough I sprinkled ½ teaspoon of dry yeast into 1 cup of warm (not hot) water and left it for 5 minutes, at the end of 5 minutes I stirred to dissolve the yeast. I added the dissolved yeast and ½ tablespoon of olive oil to the starter that had been prepared the night before and mixed well. To this I added 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt and 2-1/2 cups of flour and stirred until I had wet sticky dough. With a wooden spoon I then stirred and beat the dough by hand for 5 minutes so that the dough would become springy and pull away from the sides of the bowl but be too soft to knead. OMG! Let me tell you, this is not an easy thing to do. Rather then stirring its really more like wrestling, while you try to maintain your control over the mixing, your hand is screaming out in sheer agony. Once 5 minutes was up, I covered the bowl with a piece of Saran Wrap and a kitchen towel and let it rise until it had tripled in volume and was full of air bubbles. The book says this would take about 3 hours and this is where I think I made my first mistake. At 2 hours into the rising, I peeked under the towel and all looked really good, bubbles forming and dough bulking up so I decided to do an errand that I had been putting off for too long. Thinking I could make it to the Village and back within an hour I hopped on the subway and went to do my chore. On the way back, I decided to get off the train earlier than my stop and walk to this groovy new fruit stand/gourmet market and pick up some stuff because I was craving olives and salami. I ending up wandering the aisles for much longer than I should have, spent $38.00 on more than just olives and salami and got home to find that I was gone for an hour and 45 minutes and the dough had started to deflate. Damn

I quickly put the groceries away and washed my hands, then generously floured 2 baking sheets and preheated the oven to 425 degrees. Keeping the tin of flour close by because I’d need to flour my hands well to handle the dough, I separated the dough while it was still in the bowl using a dough scraper. Even though the book specifically states not to punch the dough down, I found it impossible to separate it with the dough scraper without completely deflating it. I wonder if I had let it rise for the correct 3 hours if I would have gotten better results…

Scooping one half of the dough onto the well floured baking sheet I then floured my hands and started to gently pull and stretch the dough to form a long rectangular loaf, about 12 inches to be more exact. Dusting the loaf and my hands with more flour I neatly plumped up the loaf and tucked the rough edges under the dough. Let me say this, cold, slightly wet dough, feels SO GOOD! I think I may have over primped and handled it because it just felt so nice in my hands. I repeated the above with the remaining dough and then set both baking sheets aside, uncovered, to proof for 20 minutes. Of coarse this turned into 35 minutes because I got distracted by the new cooking magazine that had arrived earlier with the mail. Just before I set the sheets into the oven to bake, I sprit-zed the bottom of my oven with water to create steam, then slipped the baking sheets in and closed the door for 30 minutes so the bread could bake. My oven temp varies so it ended up taking about 45 minutes to get the crust to look browned and golden, but I didn’t burn the bottoms so that made me very happy.

The bread was tasty, although I was a little disappointed with the crumb, I wanted it to be more light and airy looking and have bigger bubbles like in the book, but I guess that takes practice. I was thinking it might have needed a touch more salt, but Tom said it was delicious as is, so maybe it's my loopy pregnancy taste buds that's making me think it needed more salt. We both agreed it was a little too crusty (like break your teeth crusty) so I need to research how to correct for that next time. Overall, this was a great first try if I do say so myself.

Written by Deb on October 21, 2003 12:59 AM