Home Bread-Bakers v107.n016.2
[Advanced]

Ciabatta

"Doug Essinger-Hileman" <greypilgrim@interior-castle.org>
Sun, 06 May 2007 18:33:30 -0400
v107.n016.2
I've been reading the list since January; this is my first post. It 
is to brag a bit (I hope that isn't considered rude) and to ask a question.

I made my first ciabatta last week. I used the formula given in 
Maggie Glezer's _Artisan Baking_ for Craig Ponsford's ciabatta as a 
rough guide, with the inspiration to try a poolish instead of a biga 
from Peter Reinhart's _A Bread Baker's Apprentice_. (To convert to a 
poolish, I "took" some water from the dough and added it to the biga, 
and adjusted the yeast based on the recommendations of Rose Levy 
Beranbaum's _The Bread Bible_ for a 6-hour poolish.

In place of the mix of bread and all-purpose flour in Ponsford's 
formula, I substituted my version of wheatmeal (based on the 
suggestion in the American version, 1982 edition, of Elizabeth 
David's _English Bread and Yeast Cookery_, which says that one can 
approximate English wheatmeal by mixing 1 cup of whole wheat flour, 4 
cups of all-purpose flour and a handful or two of wheatgerm) in both 
the preferment and the dough. And in the dough, I substituted four 
tablespoons of rye flour for 3 tablespoons of the wheatmeal, 
mirroring the composition of the poolish.

I mixed the poolish at about noon, and mixed the dough around 6 pm. 
Following the directions in Glezer's book, I allowed the dough to 
ferment for about an hour and a half, turning it every 20 minutes. 
Then I put the dough into the refrigerator to allow it a retarded 
ferment overnight. The next morning, I allowed it to come to room 
temperature, shaped it, allowed it to proof for 45 minutes then baked it.

I baked on my "hearth" (based on Reinhart's recommendations in BBA). 
And the loaves were magnificent. The crust was crackling crisp and 
the crumb was tender and irregularly laced with large holes. I was 
ecstatic, as this is the first bread I've baked where I've 
successfully created the irregular, large holes in the crumb.

My questions are two: Glezer introduces this formula with, "This is a 
large, dramatic bread full of huge holes and beautifully striped with 
flour." Can I assume that she means that the outside is striped with 
flour? Secondly, the instructions suggest "using plenty of flour for 
dusting [the dough during turning] 3 or 4 times." I forgot to dust at 
all during the dusting. I assume that this led to the dough remaining 
fairly wet, which obviously worked out well. Would someone like to 
surmise what effects would result from actually using the flour to 
dust during turning?

TIA

Doug