A Baker's Dozen
Ciabatta. Italian for slipper.
A wonderful thing to eat and also lots of fun to make. Ciabatta is the second bread that I have tried to produce from the wonderful and inspiring "The Bread Bakers Apprentice". The first was from-scratch sourdough, and after a week of preparation and feeding and nurturing of the yeasty little mound of dough I finally got two pretty solid loaves of not-too-bad bread out of it. Clearly I had picked the most difficult and time consuming bread in the entire book as my starting point, which just goes to show that sometimes it's the really tricky things that appeal the most and coincidentally provide the most enjoyment.
My first sourdough...
Ciabatta was a lot simpler, and my first bread using a poolish as a starter which I think I prefer because it feels like it's easier to mix in the extra flour and water to a poolish which is already pretty soft and elasticy to start with. I got small two ciabbatas cooked from half of the dough and still have the other two sitting in the fridge waiting for me to get some more free time to stoke up the oven again. So not quite the baker's dozen after all but a pretty good start. Hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have tried at least a few more recipes and have improved my technique and the resulting breads.
No matter what, there's nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread to bring a smile to your face.
One of the ciabatta...
A wonderful thing to eat and also lots of fun to make. Ciabatta is the second bread that I have tried to produce from the wonderful and inspiring "The Bread Bakers Apprentice". The first was from-scratch sourdough, and after a week of preparation and feeding and nurturing of the yeasty little mound of dough I finally got two pretty solid loaves of not-too-bad bread out of it. Clearly I had picked the most difficult and time consuming bread in the entire book as my starting point, which just goes to show that sometimes it's the really tricky things that appeal the most and coincidentally provide the most enjoyment.
My first sourdough...
Ciabatta was a lot simpler, and my first bread using a poolish as a starter which I think I prefer because it feels like it's easier to mix in the extra flour and water to a poolish which is already pretty soft and elasticy to start with. I got small two ciabbatas cooked from half of the dough and still have the other two sitting in the fridge waiting for me to get some more free time to stoke up the oven again. So not quite the baker's dozen after all but a pretty good start. Hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have tried at least a few more recipes and have improved my technique and the resulting breads.
No matter what, there's nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread to bring a smile to your face.
One of the ciabatta...
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