Simply the best?

You may have noticed that I am steadily catching up with the backlog of recipes I have accumulated over the past few months. This time it is the turn of an idea I had some time ago, but which has taken a while to put into practice (and some experimentation).

I always like to think of new flavours to add to my bread; I often use my simple bread recipe so adding seeds, herbs and other flavourings stops it from becoming dull. The addition of wine to bread is not a new concept, but with my favourite being red wine I wanted to see if I could get that flavour, and colour, into my baking. There are problems with adding wine to bread, the principal one being that high concentrations of alcohol can have an inhibitory effect on the yeast, slowing or even stoping the rising. After a few experiments watering down the wine I realised that this was reducing the flavour and colour too much to be useful, so I came up with another plan.

I reduced an entire bottle of red wine down to about a third of its original volume by heating it slowly on the stove in a large pan. The first time I did this I busied myself elsewhere in the house while it was going on (watched TV), but the second time I had lots of washing up to do so I shared the kitchen with the wine. Bad idea. The fumes coming off the pan got me not-nice-drunk and gave me a nasty little headache into the bargain. I suggest if you try this that you do it in a well ventilated area.

With my super-concentrated and alcohol-free wine I then proceeded to make a loaf of bread that my wife described as, 'possibly the best bread I have ever tasted.' She doesn't shirk telling me when she thinks I have not succeeded in my plans, so this is praise indeed. The taste is reminiscent of both red wine and the flavour of burnt crust, and pervades the entire loaf. I shall definately be making it again, if only because it is a good way to get rid of that bottle that someone bought you, but you haven't had the courage to drink.

As always the recipe is available in an easy to use single page pdf, so give it a go if the idea intrigues you. Even better, try ideas of your own and see what happens.

I made it out of my own head.

Ciabatta

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.