Hope you all are having a great time. I always love to bake different kinds of bread and I really wanted to join the group - "We knead to bake", where they bake different kinds of beautiful breads. This time I too joined in the group to enjoy the bread varieties to boost up our taste buds and view the art of baking bread in different approach. Ciabatta is an Italian white bread with a very few ingredients. Thank Lord! for helping me to make this beautiful Italian bread.
I must thank Manju who blogs at Manju's eating delights, as she has answered my yeast related queries and given a good solution for my endless worries. "Why my yeast is not proofing ?" This question was the pal with me for a couple of days. I never faced such a gloomy situation before. I'm using the same brand of yeast and then what happened....? A good clarification has been given by Manju......
For this episode of bread baking, Aparna has given us the chance of baking our own bread. I decided to bake Ciabatta loaf same as she has done. I never heard of such a breed of bread before. Itz so enthusiastic to learn newer and newer stuff. The thrill we feel when our hard work gets satisfactory output is simply incomparable right...?
My bread has gone a little bit dark brown so I recommend you to take the bread out of the oven when it is just golden brown and puffed up. After 20 minutes of baking, please do check the bread in the oven periodically to avoid my kind of situation. These videos will help you for the shaping of Ciabatta and for the mixing and folding the dough, please watch this video too
Recipe source :Aparna and Kitchn
Ingredients:
To prepare Biga
Half cup all purpose flour
One- fourth teaspoon of active dry yeast
One-third cup of water
To prepare Ciabatta Dough
The Biga
Half teaspoon active dry yeast
Two cups of all purpose flour
One teaspoon salt
One cup water
Method:
In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in luke warm water and add the flour to form a thick and gloppy paste. Inorder to build up the gluten, do give sixty to eighty brisk stirs. Cover it with a cling and let it rest for 8 hours or overnight in a really warm spot.
After these long hours, you can view the biga to be soupy with bubbles dotting the surface. (If you doesn't find this appearance, then wait until it become visible as mentioned).
Now dissolve the yeast in luke warm water in the bowl of your stand mixer and dissolve biga into it. With your fingers, loosen it up and break into stringy blobs.
Add the flour and salt and then stir to form a thick and very wet dough. Permit it to rest for 20 minutes to absorb water.
Make your stand mixer fitted with dough hook (if u are any other machine for kneading, make the corresponding attachment) and on medium speed, knead for 15 minutes.
When the dough starts climbing up, stop the mixer and scrape it down again. At the end, you will get a dough which is creamy and glossy.
Cover the bowl with a cling and let the dough rise at 70oF to 75oF as in between this window of temperature, your yeast will be happiest :) (I put the bowl inside the room adjusting heater to 73oF :P) for three hours ...till the dough is tripled its amount.
Generously apply flour on the work surface and scrape the dough out of the bowl and be careful not to deflate the dough. Slightly stretch and fold the dough as mentioned in the above videos or with a scraper , cut the dough into two or three parts.
Press your finger tips about half way into the dough and make dimples and let it rise for 40 minutes.
When it is ready to bake, they should look pillowy with many big bubbles just beneath the surface.
Now itz time to preheat the oven to 475oF and put the baking sheet at the centre of the oven, while the loaves are rising.
When the loaves are ready to bake put it in the baking tray and bake for 20 to 30 minutes.
Allow the bread to cool completely before serving.
It would be very helpful for you if you have an aid of a machine for the kneading process as the dough formed is very sticky and wet . I have done it with the assistance of a stand mixer. The outer portion is a little harder and the inner portion is so chewy.
This offers a quite different perspective of our usual taste of bread for sure :-).
