My love affair with ciabatta bread has significant history. As freshmen in high school, my closest friend Christine and I worked foodservice at the Oregon Zoo (jobs we were offered when on site filming a freshman English music video based on Romeo and Juliet, which is another story for another time). With what, at fifteen years of age, felt like unprecedented large cash flow, Christine and I decided to eat out at fancy restaurants in Portland, OR. Each week we picked a five-star spot from newspaper reviews, dressed up in black and grey business suits and fake eye glasses to look older, drove my 93 Isuzu Trooper down Lovejoy into town and then tried to act at least twenty something by pretending to ponder the wine list and by ordering a $20 cheese platter to begin. We spent a week’s paycheck in two hours’ time, and it was so worth it. These evenings were my first ciabattas. Every restaurant, Fratelli, Georgio’s, Opa, all the fancy Pearl District bistros served ciabatta. I became obsessed. I insisted that we eat ciabatta from QFC at home. I preferred to dip it in olive oil and balsamic, something I learned one does with ciabatta on evenings out with Christine.
I never imagined I could make ciabatta for myself. Surely, one thinks, in the desperate sort of way one thinks of true happiness, making ciabatta will be too difficult—ciabatta will be a craft beyond my skill set. A luxury to be enjoyed when one has expendable income or when one is a freshly employed freshman in high school and wants to appear mature and knows nothing of the pressure of a proper savings account. Not so. And as it turns out, true happiness is just as simple as flour and water and a pinch of salt. And a bulldog.
Christine, this loaf is dedicated to you and the blush of our early teens, which is exactly what I taste whenever I dip ciabatta in oil and vinegar.
Ciabatta
Baking Illustrated
Biga (which means Sponge in Italian)
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp instant or rapid rise yeast (I use sourdough starter method—see post on Uighur naan for instructions
1 ½ cup water
Dough
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp instant or rapid rise yeast
2 tsp salt (I use sea salt)
1 ½ cups water, at room temperature (some people, I read, use pale ale, which I might try next time, didn’t have any on hand)
Make the biga 8 – 24 hours in advance of the dough. When ready, add to dough and knead for 10 – 15 mins. Let rise for one hour. Fold dough in on itself 8 times around the bowl. Let rise 1 more hour, cover liberally with flour and fold in on itself again. Let rest for 1 more hour. Remember autolysis? This folding business is called turning (VERY IMPORTANT). Divide. Form loaves by pulling the dough out upon the parchment, it will be wet and sort of tongue-like.
Heat oven to 500, warm baking stone for 1/2 hour before sliding parchment with loaves into oven. Bake for 20 mins with steam and then take the loaf off the parchment paper, flip it over and brown the bottom for 10-15 minutes. Test for doneness at 205 – 210 degrees.
No question, 5 stars. And, at least for me, something of a fountain of youth effect. Enjoy.
I selected this post to be featured on my blog’s page at Cooking Blogs.
Want to know what it is like to cook with me in the kitchen? Exactly like this, right Mom? I had my own experience with snickering shrimp and techno beats just last night. I made shrimp pasta for our Filmosopher’s Fellowship club:
Greek Pasta with Shrimp, Garbanzo Beans, and Lemon
Hyvee Seasons
8 oz bow-tie pasta
1/4 c.extra virgin olive oil
Oregano leaves from 8 fresh sprigs
Thyme leaves from 8 fresh sprigs
5 cloves garlic, sliced
1 pound fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 (15 oz can) Hy-Vee garbanzo beans, drained
1 large handful baby spinach
Kosher salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
Plain Greek yogurt, optional, for serving
Additional olive oil, optional, for serving
Zest and wedges from 1 lemon, optional for serving
All you do
Prepare bow-tie pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse; set aside.
Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add olive oil, herbs and garlic and saute 15 to 30 seconds.
Add shrimp; saute about 1 to 2 minutes or until shrimp just turn pink. Fold in garbanzo beans and pasta; heat through. Remove from heat, fold in spinach and season to taste with salt and black pepper.
Turn out onto a large platter to serve. If desired, top with dollops of Greek yogurt, olive oil and freshly grated lemon zest and wedges.
So fast, and tasted great! We watched Doubt, the 2008 five-times Academy nominated film about a 1960s Catholic parish rocked by the many currents of doubt that coursed through society after Kennedy’s assassination. The film managed to cast doubt on every major social issue: homosexuality, race, the Church, spirituality, good and evil, and fidelity. Oh, such a wonderful film and cast: Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and Philip Seymor Hoffman. If Doubt were an Academy contender this year, it would win all five, Karl-Peter think, but 2008 was a killer year for films.
We are getting excited for the upcoming Academies. Are you voting? Let me know if you want to cast a ballot into our pool for Sunday, and I’ll email you one. We will have prizes (maybe bread!) for the most accurate ballots! Must be in to me by 6p central Sunday Feb 24th!
See what I did there? Stealing the strategy of every self-respecting protein bar, I took something that was good for you but tasted awful and dipped it in chocolate. The Hunza Sprouted Wheat Berry Bread, this is a revision to my earlier post, needs help. No one, and this has an n=8, no one thinks the bread is palatable on its own. Wheat berries mashed together with apricots and a pinch of salt isn’t altogether different from if I had put the breakfast nook table through the woodchipper with the fruit on it and then baked the mash. It tastes more of furniture than of food. I credit this idea to my friend Lindsey who after I complained in the Hunza post said, you know, dipping things in chocolate doesn’t cancel the health value. Thanks, Linds– I hope you try this Hunza chocolate fondue.
With chocolate, you can actually swallow the little healthy nuggets! Long Live Us All!
I ripped up the bread and dipped it in chocolate bark. Yum. Izzy is the n = 1 who liked the bread on its own. If I run out of chocolate, the rest of the bread will go to Izzy treats.
Again, it is the international year of quinoa, and so I am making special effort to learn new quinoa recipes. This was superb in concert with Sleepy Monk coffee made on French press.
Pumpkin Breakfast Quinoa
Hyvee Seasons
Prepare 1 cup dry quinoa (the package should tell you how, 2 cups water to one cup quinoa, bring to boil then simmer covered until water absorbed—just like rice). While still warm, stir in ½ cup pumpkin, ¼ cup brown sugar, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon ground ginger and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg. Should make 4 cupful servings. I like to top mine with dried cranberries and crushed pecans in a comically large bowl because I am too lazy to wash the small ones. So easy and good for you!
I have about a thousand pages of reading to do in the next two weeks, and a thousand pages of writing I would like to do. It’s going to be a Sleepy Monk week.
Happy President’s Day! Also, Dr. Dre Day—the man’s 48!
I read through this recipe three times and my head was still ringing. Everything seemed so important—one misstep and my baguette would need a body bag, I read between the lines. I stretched this process into two days of work. I pre-fermented overnight. I let the loaves “cold rise” in the fridge for the maximum 16 hours. I woke up before 6am this morning to retrieve them from the fridge and bring them to room temperature. I preheated my oven to 500 degrees. As I glazed the loaves at 7am and trimmed the parchment I felt it was my life savings slipping off the peel and into the abyss. Please, please, please… And besides the one eyelash which fell into the dough and rolled into the left baguette (I noticed the imperfection during the glazing), they were absolutely perfect. The sunrise was no match for my French bakery-style baguettes.
1/2 tsp Instant Yeast or 3/4 tsp Regular Dry Yeast
½ cup Water 75F
2 cups Flour
1 tsp Salt
1 Egg White
1 T Water, Room Temperature
DIRECTIONS
Combine the ingredients for the sponge and stir with a wooden spoon to form a thick batter. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula and cover with plastic wrap and punch a few holes in the plastic wrap. Let stand at room temperature. After 4-5 hours, it should almost be doubled in size and have tiny bubbles. Let stand until the surface has a slight depression in the center, 2-3 hours.
2 Add the remaining yeast to the sponge along with all but 2 T of 75F water. Stir briskly with a wooden spoon until the water is incorporated, about 30 seconds. Stir in the flour and continue mixing until a scrappy ball forms. Turn onto a countertop and knead by hand, adding a few drops of water as necessary, until the dry bits are absorbed, about 2 minutes. Stretch the dough into a rough 8“x6” rectangle. Make small indentations with your fingers around the rectangle, then sprinkle with a tablespoon of water. Fold the edges up towards the center to encase the water, then pinch edges to seal. Knead lightly for about 30 seconds.
3 Alternate flinging the dough vigorously against the countertop and kneading it gently until soft, supple, and smooth, about 7 minutes. Perform the “windowpane test” by stretching the dough as thin as possible, forming a thin membrane. If the dough tears, knead 5 minutes longer. Repeat until successful.
4 Gather the dough into a ball, place in a large bowl, and wrap with plastic wrap. Let stand for half an hour, knead gently to deflate, gather back into a ball, replace the plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled, about an hour and a half.
5 Decompress the dough by gently pressing a fist into the center of the dough. Turn onto a work surface and divide into two 12oz pieces. Cover one piece with plastic wrap. With the other, cup hands stiffly around the dough and drag in short, semi-circular motions towards the edge of the counter until a dough forms in a torpedo shape with a taut, rounded surface, about 6 1/2″ long. Repeat with second piece and drape plastic wrap over the dough on the work surface. Let rest for 15-20 minutes.
6 Meanwhile, line an inverted rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Working one at a time (second piece covered with plastic wrap), roll into a log about 12“ long and place, seam-side down, onto the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with second piece. Space the logs about 6” apart and drape a clean, dry kitchen towel over the dough. Slide the sheet into a large, clean garbage bag; seal to close. Refrigerate until dough has risen moderately, 12-16 hours.
7 Remove an oven rack from the oven and adjust another to the lowest position. Place a pizza stone on the rack in the oven; place a heavy rimmed baking sheet on the oven floor.
8 Remove the baguettes on the tray from the refrigerator. Let stand at room temperature for 45 minutes, then remove the bag and the towel to let stand for 15 minutes more. Meanwhile, bring a cup of water to simmer in a small saucepan.
9 Heat oven to 500F. With a single-edge razor blade, make 5 1/4″ deep diagonal slashes on each baguette. Brush the baguettes with the egg white and mist with water. Quickly slide parchment sheet with the baguettes on top onto the hot pizza stone. Pour the simmering water onto the baking sheet on the oven floor and quickly close the oven door. Bake, rotating loaves from front to back and side to side after 10 minutes, until deep golden and fully cooked, about 15 minutes total. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes
After I read through the instructions several times, I was enamored with the vocabulary: rounding, crashing, windowpaning, but I had no idea what these terms meant. I found some videos which were as informative as they were hypnotic.
My favorite baker’s quotation from King Arthur’s Bakery:
“Think of the person you love the most. You went over and put your hand on them. It’s going to be gentle but also an affirmation. That’s how you want to touch the dough.” Aw.
I had never “crashed” dough before. You have to sprinkle water into a pouch you form in the dough, seal it up, and then take the dough and whack it against the counter. You look insane doing it, but if no one is watching, it is quite cathartic. Izzy was horribly confused, but she usually is. Then, the windowpane. I wanted so badly to have a perfect membrane. My arm got tired. I didn’t time it but if I had the clock would have laid over with a figure eight to say I had been kneading forever. I got about 1 cm of a windowpane before it ripped. Enough! I thought I would be doomed at that point, but there was grace. My loaves are fine.
They are not 15 inches as they should be. My oven isn’t that deep (seriously, world’s smallest oven). They are more like chubby footlongs. The two baguettes stuck together when rising in the fridge, which I worried about. They were fine.
My takeaway lesson from this experience is: don’t freak out when the America’s Test Kitchen cooks fill three pages of prose to describe what they snobbishly “thought could not be accomplished by home bakers.” Just watch those shaping videos, mist your buns, preheat your oven—everything will come out fine. Your best is enough.
This bread made me want to square dance. So good—5 stars. Happy Random Act of Kindness Day. Bake this and put it on your neighbor’s porch. Even if you don’t know them.
Hearty Country Bread
Adapted from Baking Illustrated
Makes 1 large loaf.
Sponge
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 cup room temperature water
1 cup bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
Combine in a medium bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 5-24 hours.
Dough
2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1 1/3 cups room temperature water
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons salt
Mix all but salt in mixer at lowest speed for 15 minutes; add salt during last 3 minutes. If dough looks dry after salt is added, add water in 1 tablespoon increments until a smooth consistency is reached. Transfer to very lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, let rise 2 hours or until tripled in size.
Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface, lightly flour your hands and the top of the dough with flour. Lightly press dough into a round by folding the top, right, bottom, and left sides of the dough into the center. Transfer dough, smooth side down, to a colander or basket lined with heavily floured muslin or linen (I used one of those straw paper plate holders and a cloth napkin). Cover loosely with aluminum foil or a dry cloth, let rise until almost doubled in size, at least 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 degrees and put a baking stone in the oven, if you have one.
Bake for 30-45 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 210 degrees F. Leave oven open for 10 minutes before removing loaf. Crust should be dark and crispy.
The 50% hydration of the sponge makes it a bit more dry and crispy. I was amazed to read about “autolysis”—the process at work whenever a recipe asks you to let your dough “rest.” When gluten is activated by the combination of flour and water, the molecules, pencil-like, are at first in disarray. Imagine your pencil box dumped out on the floor. The process of autolysis is like an OCD child (enzymes) picking up the pencils one by one and placing them back in the pencil box in perfect lines. Gluten, only at rest, is worked on by enzymes aligning the molecules so that when you get to kneading the dough, the gluten fibrils are in lines that can more easily tether to one another and structure the dough. You had no idea bread was so expert, eh? I wish I had those enzymes in my personal life.
Pliny the Elder had a low opinion of rye. Pliny, who happens to be one of my favorite historical sources not because of his authority but because of his Sesame Street name, said rye “is a very poor food and only serves to avert starvation” (quotation abstracted from Wikipedia, what you will). I can now infer two things about dear Pliny. He neither tried this recipe nor enjoyed a sip of rye whiskey.
For the sponge: Heat oven to 350 degrees F; if using toast rye flakes on small baking sheet until fragrant and golden brown, about 10-12 minutes. Cool to room temperature. Mix water, yeast, honey, rye flakes or rye bread improver, and flour in the large mixing bowl of a heavy-duty mixer to form a thick batter. Cover with plastic wrap, and let sit until bubbles form over entire surface, at least 2 1/2 hours. (Can stand at room temperature overnight.)
For the dough: Stir all-purpose flour, 3 1/4 cups rye flour, caraway seeds, oil, and salt into the sponge. With machine fitted with dough hook and set on speed 2, knead dough, adding the remaining 1/4 cup rye flour once the dough becomes cohesive; knead until smooth yet sticky, about 5 minutes. With moistened hands, transfer dough to a well-floured counter, knead it into a smooth ball, then place in a lightly greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at warm room temperature until doubled in size, 1 1/4 to 2 hours.
Generously sprinkle cornmeal on a large baking sheet. Turn dough onto a lightly floured work surface and press dough into 12×9-inch rectangle. (For 2 smaller loaves, halve the dough, pressing each portion into a 9×6 1/2-inch rectangle.) With one of the long sides facing you, roll dough into a 12-inch (or 9-inch) log, seam side up. Pinch seam with fingertips to seal. Turn dough seam side down, and with fingertips, seal ends by tucking dough into the loaf. Carefully transfer shaped loaf (or loaves) to prepared baking sheet, cover loosely with greased plastic wrap, and let proof until dough looks bloated and dimply, and starts to spread out, 60 to 75 minutes. Adjust oven rack to lower center position and heat oven to 425 degrees.
For the glaze and baking: Whisk egg white and milk together and brush over sides and top of loaf (loaves). Make 6 or 7 slashes, 1/2-inch-deep, on dough top(s) with a serrated knife, single-edge razor blade, or lamé. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower oven temperature to 400 degrees and bake until golden brown and an instant-read thermometer inserted in center of the loaf registers 200 degrees, 15 to 20 minutes for small loaves and 25 to 30 for larger loaf. Transfer to a wire rack and cool to room temperature. Slice and serve.
Delicious, 4.5 stars. This rye tastes good enough to be eaten on its own. The crust is crispy and thick, the cornmeal dusting on the bottom makes it look country bumpkinish, like its rye loaf mother gave birth to it in a barn on a bed of cornmeal, an image which, now that I examine the metaphor, is perfect because the warm loaf does appear to be swaddled, but which falls apart when you think about eating it. Nevermind. I retract my metaphor. It is delicious and not at all like a baby.
Now all the loaves I attempt this week require pre-fermentation—Sponge. This means you have to start your bread the night before you want to put it in the oven. The point of making a sponge is to get the yeast revved up and also to develop more complex flavor profile from the yeast. Because think about it, the yeast is given all night to hang out with its favorite characters, flour and water. It has more time for bacterial shenanigans on the proteins, more time to make lactic acid and –ols. But, you might argue, why pre-ferment, Rachel, when you are already pre-fermenting by using sourdough starter instead of packaged yeast? Well, I pre-ferment because my starter lives in the refrigerator, a clime kept at 40 degrees. I think of myself at 40 degrees; I do nothing. I keep my fingers to myself, under my buns, and I read (sort of). Mostly I think resentful thoughts about people who live in the tropics and I hoard socks. Now, this is attitude is bad for bread. No flavors come of such dourness. So, you let them out into an early spring, give them something constructive to do, and the aroma of bread will smell of springtime adrenaline.
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.
Had a Parkway Catfish Poorboy the other day that sent me to some sort of -vana. Brought my starter to New Orleans and made some Ellis Pancakes for our friends but haven’t done anything new–left the cookbooks at home. It would be something of an arrogance to come to New Orleans and cook for yourself. There is just too much good food here already.
It was a foggy morning in Jackson Square, and although it is raining now, it did not rain on our parade!
We started marching at 7:30am, right out before Zulu. My costume was a bit cerebral in retrospect. Here I am as an anatomical heart, which seemed appropriate due to this year’s Mardi Gras’s proximity to Valentine’s Day. No one got it. Are you a crawfish? Red Bagpipes? And my favorite, You’re the Hunchback of Notre Dame!
I managed to wear it all through the parade. I met Wendell Pierce from Treme (he plays Antoine Batiste):
And then things started to go down hill with the heart costume. It eventually met its end in a dumpster in the French Quarter.
We finished at noon like we always do with the world’s best burger at Port of Call. What a wonderful mardi gras day!
