Today, following yesterday's pizza making and with a ball of over-risen dough, I made two loaves of ciabatta. These two follow each other because, as with a few other Italian breads, ciabatta requires a starter to get the well developed dough that gives it its characteristic texture. The things to note about this dough is that it is very wet and difficult to work with; if you have a breadmaker (there will be a post in the near future outlining my opinion of these machines), then use that to knead the dough as it is much easier. Otherwise, just be prepared for a really wet dough and do all the kneading in the bowl. The other main point to note is that one has to be very careful not to knock the air out of the dough when transferring it to the baking tray, make sure the bowl it is in is well oiled and ease it out with a spatula.
Enough from me, I'm going to the pub, the recipe is here and, as I have made a few alterations to it as I have improved the method over time, it will suffice until I can upload a new copy to the same location. If you have dough left over from a pizza then you obviously start at the point after the starter has been prepared and left to rise (the time isn't especially important for that aspect).
Buona sera.
2 comments:
Hey, Barney - great to see your blog! I love the recipes and I look forward to trying them out... very soon! The video of the pizza peel method was especially interesting - wow! Super Peel! Can you recommend where I might get a decent stone (or what I might use...)?
I used a foot-square paving slab that I cut down to fit my oven (about three inches off one end). If you don't have a stone cutting angle grinder then you may need to look a bit harder for the right dimensions, buy an (expensive) purpose made oven stone, or find a builder who will cut it for you.
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