Making Ciabatta

Is that a beautiful loaf or what?

Fall is in the air. Thoughts of root vegetables and comfort food fill my mind. I no longer lust after juicy summer tomatoes but rather crave squash and meat and potatoes and the like. Like bread. Yep. Homemade bread, still warm out of the oven with a slather of butter. Just like that. Nothing more. It doesn't get much better than that. It is so gratifying to bake the bread and then to be able to eat it right out of the oven. Bread I made. When I first made this bread I would just stand over the bread and make ohing sounds. Now that I have had more practice I actually have some self control and can wait for dinner or at least until my husband gets home so we can have some together.

I love Ciabatta. It is the perfect bread. It's hard on the outside, but soft on the inside. It has lots of air bubbles which help to make the bread light and airy. I use it quite often to make crostini but I also love it toasted for breakfast. It tastes good alone or with stuff on it. It also freezes very well. If I buy a loaf I immediately cut it up and put it in a freezer bag and freeze it. That way I can pull out a slice at a time and it always tastes fresh when I want it.

What bothers me is that a nice artisan loaf of bread is getting close to 5 bucks these days. It occurred to me that this bread is really only flour and water. For 5 bucks??? Hum. For years I had a wish that I could make bread myself but after taking a couple of bread classes and buying several bread cookbooks I wasn't much closer to making anything I really wanted to eat.

Then one day I was watching America's Test Kitchen and they were making ciabatta. Fool proof ciabatta. Yea right! I had heard that before. I sat there watching every step very closely. I had recorded the show and proceeded to watch it a couple more times over the next couple of weeks. I finally sat down with a pad of paper and wrote down all the instructions and decided to get in the kitchen and give it a try. They were right, it was fool proof. I had success on my first loaf. But it was not quite good enough for me so I made it again and again and again. I am now happy to say that I think I have perfected this recipe. I can get in the kitchen and whip up a loaf of ciabatta like it's nothing. That being the case I have been making a loaf a week. That's about how long it lasts with two of us in the house.

The one thing about this recipe that you need to know is that you must start the biga (starter)the night before. I will typically do this on either Friday and Saturday night before bed depending on my day the next day. You have to be home for several hours to perform all the steps and get it baked. So plan ahead.

I am sure you can probably go on the America's Test Kitchen web site and pull up the recipe, which I would recommend. I have included the notes I took from the show below. I made a couple of slight changes to the instructions so if you dowload the recipe there will a couple differnet directions. You will need a pizza stone and the bread will be baked on a sheet of parchment paper. In addition I always use a kitchen scale to measure the ingredients when I bake. It is important that the ingredients be exact and the only way to accomplish that is to use a scale.

Ingredients:
Biga: 5 oz all purpose flour
1/8 tsp active dry yeast
4 oz water - room temp

Bread:
Biga
10 oz all purpose flour
1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
6 oz water - slightly warm
2 oz milk - slightly warm

To make the biga: Add water to mixer bowl with paddle attachment. Sprinkle yeast over water and allow to dissolve. Turn machine on low and add the flour. Work for 1 minute. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to sit overnight or at least 8 hours.

To make the bread: In mixer with paddle attachment add water, sprinkle with yeast. Allow to dissolve then add the rest of the ingredients. Turn mixer on low and allow to come together for about 1 minute. Dough should be sticky. Increase speed to medium low for about 4 minutes. At this point it should start to pull away from the side of the bowl. Change to a dough hook and mix on high for about 10 minutes. All of these steps are building the structure of the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to double in size, about 1 hour.

Spray a large rubber spatula with cooking spray. Turn the dough on to itself starting at the outside of the bowl pulling into center. Do this all the way around the bowl about 6 to 8 times taking care not to deflate the dough more than necessary. Cover and allow to rise 30 minutes. This process helps to develop the air holes you want in the bread. Repeat this process. Allow to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. It is important that the oven be very hot.

Place pizza stone in center of the over and preheat to 450 degrees. Cut a piece of parchment paper the size of the pizza stone and then sprinkle with flour. Turn the dough onto the paper and pull gently to form a large square, taking care not to totally deflate. Do not allow the dough to take in more flour, you want it sticky. Slide parchment paper with dough on to pizza stone and spray with water. Bake 5 minutes then spray with water again. Bake 22 more minutes or until center temp is 250. Total cooking time is about 27 minutes.

Allow to cool for one hour.

A word about dough rising time. The temperate of your kitchen is going to determine how quickly or slowly the dough rises. I have grantie counter tops so if I leave the bowl of dough on the counter the temperature is so cold that the dough does not rise as it should. Therefore, I have to put the bowl on something else to allow it to rise properly. When a recipe gives a time for rising it is only an estimate. You will need to adjust as you watch the dough rise to catch it at exactly the right time. This comes with practice.

Repeat this process once a week and start counting all the money you are going to save!