Something that I really Love... is Bread! I just LOVE Bread. Particularly Homemade Bread. I could not resist the aromas of homemade bread. Memories of afternoon tea, memories of warm slices of toasted bread with butter and dulce de leche. Memories that always reminds me of my home country and the incomparable quality and taste of artisan food too.
A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a good and easy recipe for a Bread called Ciabatta.This is an Italian bread made from flour and yeast. And as far as I know the crust + crumb texture + the ingredients of this bread varies depending of every region of Italy. I read that some Ciabatta bread has a firm crust and dense crumb texture, and others have a crisper crust and more open texture.
Unfortunately the more I tried to find 'the recipe of my dreams' the less I could find it! I began to feel kind of disappointed about it. I only wanted to find an easy ciabatta bread recipe!
I certainly didn't want to spend all day long making one loaf of bread... And for some reason all recipes for Ciabatta Bread that I could find required machine kneading (which I don't happened to have) and complicated techniques that I couldn't quite understand. I kept looking until last weekend I finally found it. Yes, I found a beautiful recipe on a {new-to my knowledge} website called Famous French Desserts is a lovely website with a variety of artisan bread and desserts recipes. I tried the recipe today and it turned out absolutely fantastic! This was my first experience making homemade ciabatta bread from scratch and I really enjoyed the whole process!
I hope you enjoy it too! An if you do try it, I would love to hear your thoughts about it!
CIABATTA BREAD *ARTISAN BREAD RECIPE
(adapted from Famous French Desserts)
1 large loaf or 2 small
3 cups / ( 300 gr ) Flour
1 pack / ( 9 gr )Active Dry Yeast
1 tsp. Salt
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 pack / ( 9 gr )Active Dry Yeast
1 tsp. Salt
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 C. Lukewarm water
Preparation:
1-Sift flour into a large bowl. Mix in salt with hand. Move the ingredients to the sides of the bowl, creating a large "well" (an empty space) in the middle.
2-Pour the yeast into the "well" and pour 1 cup of lukewarm water over the yeast. Sprinkle about 1 tbsp. of flour over top. Wait (about 10 minutes) for bubbles to appear in the yeast.
3-Once the bubbles have appeared, add the 4 Tbsp. olive oil-- you can start mixing together the ingredients (hands work best, but you can use a mixer) to form the dough. The best way to do this is to Gradually Incorporate the flour that is "waiting" on the sides of the bowl. Doing it all at once will be too difficult. So, go bit by bit, if it's too liquid, just add a bit more flour at the end. You should finish this "pre-kneading" stage with a round, firm ball of dough. Again, if it's too sticky, add a little more flour.
4-Remove the dough from the bowl and place it on a lightly floured surface. Keep kneading for about 5-10 more minutes.Place the dough in a lightly floured bowl and cover with a damp dish cloth. Let it rise for about 1 hour (in a room fairly warm) or until it double the size.
5-Sprinkle a surface with flour and punch it down,once hard using your palms. Prepare a baking tray by lightly oiling it and sprinkling the bottom with flour. Set aside.Re-shape dough into a loaf. Put the loaf on the baking tray already prepared. Cover with dish towel and let it rise for about 1 more hour. Until it double the size.
When ready,form a loaf that is about 1 inch high. Preheat oven for 15 minutes. Before baking, sprinkle flour on top of the loaf. Bake in the centre of the oven at 215 C / 419 F for about 30 minutes or until golden on the outside.Now, try to resist not to eat it all :)
Two helpful Tips from the original recipe version:
Yeast:If your yeast does not bubble, it's no longer active or you did not use lukewarm water. You should start over in this case, Because the bread will not rise.
Freezing: If you are planning on freezing the bread, only bake it for 20 minutes. Wait for it to cool, then wrap in tin foil, put in a plastic bag and freeze. When you want to serve it, just preheat oven to 200 C /( 392 F ), bake inside of foil for 10 minutes and then remove foil and let brown for about 5 minutes.
The original recipe did not suggest how to create a bread shape so I started to think how to give my "Bread Dough" a nice and fancy shape and I came up with this idea:
Bread Shape: I rolled out the dough (with a rolling pin) into the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners (about 30-34 cm long and 3 cm thick).
Then starting from one of the sides with the longest dimension, roll up the dough so that the final width of the loaf is about 9 cm. The ends should be tucked and smoothed.
For the final touch, I used a sharp knife and cut 3 slashes diagonally across the top (or cut as many slashes you like).