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