Ciabatta

baguette farcie

A big thanks to Eric (ehanner) for this great idea. These baguettes (baguette Monge recipe - quick to make) are filled with mountain ham, like serrano, ewe cheese and grainy mustard. The kids loved them! I made a sun-dried tomato, herb, olive oil, goat cheese, serrano one for me. Perfect picnic fair. I formed six small rectangles, lay the ham, cheese, etc in the middle and folded the sides up and rolled lightly to form a baguette. Just have to be carfeul not to roll the dough too thin. The seam on the bottom, then slashed before baking. 

pain épice T110

The breads were made using a firm starter that I fed to become stirrable in the evening, left out all night, then the dough made in the morn, baked in the afternoon (an initial 4-5 hr rise, then a 2-3). Half T65 and half T110. The T110 is a new brand I found. It's organic and stone-ground like the other but the bran is really small and you can't really see it, but the flour is sort of grey-beige. Really strange but it makes the best bread ever with a spicey, pain d'épice smell to it.  

pain romarin

I made Mike Avery's sourdough ciabatta that was a huge hit here. I have actually never tasted it but my italian friend said it was great! This bread I'm showing is based on the same technique, but I changed a couple things.

Rosemary-honey bread 

the biga (I made an orange size ball and left it out all night) didn't weigh it 

400 ml water

625-50g T65 (bread flour over there and maybe a bit more)

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp honey

2  tsp salt

2 tbsp fresh rosemary chopped

I don't know why but the bread was lighter in texture, almost like a yeast bread. Maybe because there was no milk and the honey helped? I have no idea but it was really GOOD! 

baguettes rustiques

These are the rustic baguettes from Glezer's Artisan baking. They were really good, but  it dawned on me that I'll never get those huge holes if I always use my organic T65 which isn't real white flour. I bought some T55 non organic to try one of these days but that breaks my heart a bit. It's just a challenge thing. I don't like baguettes that much really anyway! But any amateur baker wants to try and master them ... don't we?

I read an article about french flours and yeast. Did you know that most bakeries in France have a flour sponsor? They only use the flours from that supplier and they get great, light, holey baguettes because the flour has emulsifiers, and other additives. That's pretty icky in my books... and also my initial motivation for baking my own bread. But it's very much like the States, you have wonderful artisanal bakeries and so do we. They just have to be hunted down! I read an article yesterday about France's N°1 baker who makes the best baguette in France. His name is Anis Bouabsa and is from a family of Tunisian immigrants. He talks about using a very, very small amount of yeast and a long long rise (20 -30 hrs) but didn't say anything about builds. 

Have a nice Sunday!

Jane 

Sourdough Ciabatta

I used the recipe from Peter Reinhart "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" - the Biga version.

My Biga was my white sourdough, mixed with an equal amount of organic bread flour and some water to make a firm starter.

I used half the oil given in Reinhart's recipe. I proved it on a couche (well, I got a length of thick cotton table-cloth material from a textile shop and hemmed the edge).

I flipped it onto a polenta-dusted "peel" (actually the off-cut from the ceramic tile I used in my oven) and slid it directly on the hot tile. The bread Ballooned (?does this mean it was under-prooved?) and the top-being closest to the element, almost burned.

I realize that I seriously risk tanking my whole grain cred, here, but lately ... I've been taking a shine to poolish. It'd been a long time since I'd worked with yeasted pre-ferments, and aside from an occasional baguette here and there, I'd not make a serious white bread in quite some time.

But after the New Year, in the course of just a couple of days, I made three poolish baguettes and one poolish ciabatta.

I used Jeffrey Hamelman's masterpiece Bread as a guide. I was so pleased with the baguettes, that for the ciabatta, I modified my sourdough spreadsheet to accommodate commercial yeast breads with pre-ferments, and inserted his formulas.. Aside from scaling each recipe down (I made a half-batch of poolish baguettes, which made three demi-baguetts, and a single 1.5 pound ciabatta), the only other change I made was to add a tiny speck of yeast to each poolish. With the baguettes, since they required about 1/10 gram of yeast, I added one gram of yeast to 19 grams of water and then added two grams of the solution to the poolish.

This was a pain.

So, next time, I just eyeballed about 1/4 of 1/8 tsp of yeast. Both ways turned out fine.

The biggest takeaway for me from making both of these breads is that, so long as the bread is handled firmly but gently and the loaf is well-shaped, the crumb can still be very open without a super gloppy dough. The baguettes, for instance, are just 66 percent hydration and the ciabatta is 73 percent. Of course, the poolish probably helps, since it denatures the protein and makes it more extensible. All the same, the lesson for me stands - good handling goes a long way towards getting an open crumb.

Sourdough is still my preference, but, wow, I'd forgotten how tasty a good, simple loaf of French bread is: nutty, buttery with a strong wheaty flavor that lasts, and lasts, and lasts.

Here's the photographic results. Recipes are below.

Poolish Baguettes

I'm finally starting to the hang of shaping these buggers.


I cut these in half the next day to make garlic bread and cheese bread to go with pasta.


Ciabatta with Poolish

This is, without doubt, the prettiest ciabatta I've ever made. I didn't score it - it just opened up on its own.


And an interior shot. Not as open as some ciabattas I've seen, but open enough for me. Next time, I'll bump the hydration up to 75 or maybe 78 percent.


Recipes

Poolish Baguettes (Makes 3 demi-baguettes of about 8 oz. each):
Overall formula:

• White flour: 100%
• Water: 66%
• Salt: 2%
• Instant yeast: 0.36%
• 33% of the flour is pre-fermented as a poolish at 100% hydration with .07% yeast

• White flour: 5.3 oz
• Water: 5.3 oz
• Instant yeast: Just a speck (about 1/32 of a tsp)

• All of the poolish
• White flour: 10.7 oz
• Water: 5.3 oz
• Salt: 1.5 tsp
• Instant yeast: 1/2 + 1/8 tsp

• White flour: 100%
• Water: 73%
• Salt: 2%
• Instant yeast: 0.36%
• 30% of the flour is pre-fermented as a poolish at 100% hydration with .07% yeast

• White flour: 136 grams
• Water: 136 grams
• Instant yeast: Just a speck (about 1/32 of a tsp or 1/10 of a gram)

• All of the poolish
• White flour: 318 grams
• Water: 195 grams
• Salt: 9 grams
• Instant yeast: A heaping 1/8 tsp or .5 grams

Well, I have picked up where I left off and am having a great time.

I tried to make stollen. It was my first attempt, and I think it was ok, but I know what I will change for next year.

Toast the almonds, omit the mixed peel, add more Marzipan perhaps and change some of the fruit I put in. I used apple brandy to soak the fruit which was lovely but could have used more fruit.

I added half the required fruit amount and thought that it looked like a lot of fruit so I made another batch and aded the fruit to that, then once cooked, I realiused that the fruit was scarece. Which for my preference is good, but for my hubby.....not so good.

Also, my stollen seemed really crispy and too brown. I followed the recipe but I used strong bread flour not all purpose flour, so perhaps that was the reason.

I also decided against icing it and went with a brown sugar (muscovado sugar) glaze with shaved almonds. Perhaps I should have iced it.

Oh well, this is how we learn and become better bakers :)

Stollen shaped and ready to proof 

 Stollen a little over cooked I think.

I also made my first batch of ciabatta today. I began the poolish last night and I tell you I am so proud of myself!

I decided to improvise as I was shaping and threw in a heap of red onion, and lovely organic 10 year old cheddar (I dont know much about cheese except what I like)

and bot was it consumed by myself, my hubby and my 5 year old very soon after it came out of the oven!

YUMMO! That is most definitely a make again bread :)

I will post pics as soon as I remember what my flickr account details are! lol.

thegreenbaker