It’s a cold, wintery Saturday and we decided supper should be cheese ravioli and what’s pasta without bread. I remembered that this recipe book had a recipe for Ciabattas and this was the perfect time to try it out.
Several months ago I purchased a large plastic square container for this recipe specifically. I had a circle shaped one, but Mr. Hollywood said that it was important to use a square tub to help shape the dough. I don’t need to be told twice that I should go get another kitchen implement. I may have purchased another pie pan at the same time but that’s a story for the next time I try a new pie recipe.
Again, this recipe is written based on weights. It was very simple to do and the recipe suggested using a mixer since the dough is rather wet when it’s done. I placed it into the lightly oiled tub to proof and used a kitchen towel to cover as written.
I can’t take credit for the elastic band wrapped around the tub idea. When I was doing a lot of researching on growing my own sourdough starter, I found this website www.grantbakes.com and noticed the writer used an elastic around the jar to keep a visual on when the starter had doubled. I thought this is brilliant! So I use it for proofing the dough as well. Sure, I could have just made a mental note that it was just below the start of the red vertical line but the elastic is just so easy.
This is what my dough looked like after 1 1/2 hours. The recipe calls for 1 to 2 hours or even longer proofing time but it should be at least doubled if not trebled in size. The recipes says trebled. I had to google that. I learned that treble means three times as much or as many, whereas tripled means having three parts. Not only did I make delicious bread, I learned that I had been using “tripled” incorrectly all these years.
I tried to gently tip the dough out as directed but I felt the right side went somewhat flat. I split the dough as suggested and handled it very gently to try to avoid knocking out all the air bubbles that had already developed.
I let it rest for another 10 minutes and into the oven it went. I know the shapes of my buns/loaves/whatever are not exactly rectangle. I call it abstract. The end result was amazing. The bread was chewy and soft on the inside.
I didn’t need all the baking time as listed in the recipe. It does give directions on how to test if the buns are done. The ciabattas were wonderful with pasta and a few days later, the one rectangle that was left was used to make garlic bread and it was spectacular as well.
This recipe is a keeper and will be made many times over I’m sure. We all loved it.
