earth3rd's blog

This is my latest attempt at Ciabatta. I used this recipe:  

Jason's Quick Coccodrillo Ciabatta Bread

I have to be honest though... I liked the Ciabatta No Knead better. I liked the flavour of the No Knead bread better. I must admit that the Jason's Quick Coccodrillo Ciabatta might have had a more open crumb and is a pretty looking loaf it just lacked in taste. Here are a couple of photo's.

This is the measurments I used for 2 loaves.

233 gr. bread flour

100 gr. semolina

4.7 gr. yeast

10  gr. salt

320 gr. water

I found this recipe for Ciabatta No Knead Bread on the internet at this site: 

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Make-No-Knead-Ciabatta-Bread-213126958

Watch the video... I followed every step as seen in the video.

I converted the recipe to weight measurment... here it is...

 Ciabatta -no knead bread 1 loaf

455 gr. - APF (all purpose flour)

64 gr. - WF (whole wheat flour)

0.9 gr. - yeast (active dry yeast)

9.5 gr. - salt (table salt)

473 gr. - warm water 105 - 110F  

The bread smelled and tasted fantastic, I would definatly make it again. Very easy to make. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product.

By the way... it went very nicely with the Moroccan Lentil Soup I made as well!!!!

The soup recipe can be found at this site:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Moroccan-Lentil-Soup/Detail.aspx

This is my first attempt at the bread recipe in Lesson #3 on this site:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/timeandtemperature

I was running out of time however and cheated a little, by raising the final dough in the oven to speed things up a little. I managed to reduce the time from 90 minutes to 60 minutes on the first and final rise. I didn't use any type of wash on this loaf as I wanted the crust as crunchy as possible. I did put a pan in the oven and set the oven up to 500F. I placed one cup of ice cubes into the tray just at the same time I put the bread in the oven. I reduced the heat from 500F to 400F after 4 minutes and the loaf went 40 minutes with one rotation in the middle. I did have one minor problem however, I put clingrap over the shaped loaf for the final rise and it stuck on there pretty good. I everso gently worked it off the loaf trying so hard not to push any of the air out of it. It worked out pretty good in the end though. Not a lot of oven rise but none the less my best loaf to date. One last thing to say... my slash was a little wrecked but it didn't look to bad.

The bread came out fantastic. I'm in heaven, thank you all... as this is where I learned how to do it. I've made simular recipes in the past but not as good as this one with the pre-ferment. The crust was a little crunchy and chewy and the flavour was perfect. I'm so happy.

Here are a couple of pictures.

I just made this bread the other day after watching Michael Smith on Foodtv. He was going on about how good the crust comes out if you bake the bread in a covered pot. The recipe can be seen at:  http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/recipe.html?dishid=9530

I used the pot method. Also the recipe I used was the "city bread" recipe. Followed the recipe to the letter. The dough was very wet, exactley the same as a poolish for french bread, a little hard to handle but I was gentle.

There is only 1/4tsp. of yeast, 16 hours for the first rise, 2 hours on the second rise. The bread tasted pretty good to me, much more flavour than a plain white bread.

Here are a couple of pictures for your viewing pleasure.