The Fresh Loaf

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Ciabatta Pizza

xaipete's picture
xaipete

Ciabatta Pizza

Yesterday I tried the ciabatta pizza that trailrunner posted about a week ago. I was very impressed with the results.

The pizza formula has a lot of yeast in it and went through bulk fermentation like a rocket (I had to put it in the fridge to slow it down.) When it had tripled (after about 3 hours in fridge--probably faster but I just let it sit there until I was ready), I heavily floured my counter, literally poured the glutenous dough onto the flour, and then sprinkled more flour on the top. I patted the blob into a circle about 1/2 an inch thick. Then the trick was how to get the blob onto the pan-sprayed parchment. I did the best I could but had to reshape it a bit after it landed. Didn't seem to hurt it any. I topped it with tomatoes and basil (topping basil was an obvious mistake at this point because it dried out in the oven--next time I'll put it on as a garnish; sometimes in the heat of the moment I do stupid things).

I baked it on a preheated stone on the bottom rack for 8 minutes. (Trailrunner had warned me that I needed to bake the moisture out of the tomatoes and that was good advice.) After taking it out of the oven with my peel, I removed the parchment paper, topped it with some of TJ's marinated rope-type mozzarella, and slid it back in the oven for another 8 minutes. It rose up real nice in the oven and produced a delicate, soft, thickish pizza crust. The pizza as a whole didn't have as much flavor as I was hoping for but my tomatoes weren't home grown (I used an heirloom supermarket variety), so I'm not surprised as the topping was so plain. Next time I think I'll reduce the yeast to 3 g (I used 7 g by mistake) so it will take longer to go through bulk fermentation and perhaps develop a little more flavor. But all and all I was pretty happy with the results. Thanks trailrunner for posting this great pizza!

Topped with tomatoes and ready to go into the oven.

After 8 minutes

After 15 minutes (TJ's cheese had some oil in it so that's why it browned; regular mozzarella probably wouldn't brown.)

Crumb (or is it slice?)


250 g AP flour

227 g water (I might reduce to 210 g next time)

3 g yeast (I misread the recipe and used 7 g by accident)

7 g salt

tomatoes, thinly sliced or halved cherries, or a combination of both

mozzarella cheese, grated or thinly sliced

fresh basil leaves, for garnish

olive oil

kosher salt

Put the flour, water, salt, and yeast in mixer bowl and mix with paddle to incorporate. Let dough rest for 5 minutes to hydrate. Knead with dough hook on speed 2 for 10 minutes. (My dough never formed a ball like trailrunner's so next time I'm going to use a little less water).

Put dough into a container and let triple.

Place dough onto a heavily floured countertop, sprinkle top of dough with flour, and pat into a round about 1/2 inch thick. Transfer dough to pan-sprayed parchment paper, top with thinly sliced tomatoes, and bake on a stone in a preheated 500º oven for 8 minutes to drive off the moisture from the tomatoes and set the dough. Remove pizza and parchment from oven, discard parchment and top with mozzarella cheese. Return pizza to oven and bake until done, about another 7 to 8 minutes.

Garnish with fresh basil leaves, and a light sprinkling of kosher salt and olive oil.

Makes one pizza (serves two people).

The original post is from LilDice.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3621/quick-rustic-ciabatta-pizza-recipe-full-howto-pics

http://hollosyt.googlepages.com/quickrusticciabattapizza

I also found another link to this pizza with pictures and discussion. NB: the reduced amount of IDY.

http://www.prurgent.com/2009-04-15/pressrelease36039.htm

--Pamela

 

Comments

SylviaH's picture
SylviaH

Beautiful looking pizza!, Pamela..the yellow tomatoes and creamy cheese look delicious .

Sylvia

ehanner's picture
ehanner

Delicious looking Pizza.

Eric

hansjoakim's picture
hansjoakim

Very nice! You got me all hungry now.

Could a "ciabatta pizza" go for a "heavily topped focaccia", or would that be something else entirely?

xaipete's picture
xaipete

A heavily topped focaccia would be similar to this pizza, I think, but focaccia is lighter and more open in texture. This simple-to-make pizza is light but denser than focaccia.

In my opinion the ciabatta pizza's dough makes a fairly bland but light base upon which to show off some very flavorful tomatoes, fresh basil and artisan-type cheese.

--Pamela

audra36274's picture
audra36274

   way the cheese is sort of dribbling over the edge, your killing me. That photo of it whole reminded me of a pizza I used to make with  just onions, sliced and cooked in butter and just the cheese. YUM. I hadn't had it in years. AW... now you got me wanting pizza! Dang, and I already had the kitchen clean ;-)

 Audra

xaipete's picture
xaipete

Thanks, Audra. Give this one a try. Your kids will love it.

--Pamela

trailrunner's picture
trailrunner

I never looked back to see if you made the pizza. I can tell from reading your transcript of the directions that you didn't make the dough at a high enough setting on the KA. Lil Dice says to use setting 10 for 10 min. It does work . Don't change the water amounts...it only needs to be beaten much faster. My KA had no problem doing it this high. Your pizza does look wonderful !! Also if you read the whole thread in the original post you will see that several folks converted the 8oz water to grams which would be 240g . I believe that some folks used 223 or so. I wouldn't go as low as you are thinking until you try the 10 for 10. Also if you shape the dough on the sprayed parchment rather than shaping and transfer it is a lot easier. I hope all this helps. Caroline