* Exported from MasterCook *
Bread, Rosemary Ciabatta with Stout Beer
Recipe By :TheWimpyVegetarian
Serving Size : 16 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Bread Bread-Bakers Mailing List
Low Fat Posted
Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
Poolish (Pre-ferment):
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast -- or 3/8 tsp Active Dry Yeast
210 grams water -- at 70F
210 grams bread flour -- (I recommend King Arthur bread flour)
Rosemary Ciabatta with Stout Beer:
15 ounces bread flour
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast -- or 3/8 tsp Active Dry Yeast
3 teaspoons kosher salt
10 ounces poolish
8 ounces Stout beer -- other beers can be used as well
2 teaspoons malt syrup
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
2 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
Fleur de sel -- for sprinkling on top of each boule
Author Notes: This is a flavorful dough that I created when I was in
school and I've continued to tweak. It is great eaten on its own or
as a sandwich bread for many kinds of sandwiches but particularly
pastrami and grilled cheese sandwiches with or without proscuitto.
Some cooking notes: While I love the meditative activity of kneading
dough by hand, this is a fairly wet dough and is best kneaded with
the dough hook attachment on a standing mixer. One of the ways to
build flavor in bread is through a longer rising time. To enhance the
bread flavor, I made a pre-ferment (sometime referred to as poolish)
the day before I planned to bake the bread, which was then added to
the other bread ingredients on baking day. Poolish also helps make a
crusty bread with irregular crumb (bigger holes), which I was looking
for in creating this recipe, and also provides greater dough
strength, better aroma and increased shelf life. Poolish is
essentially equal parts bread flour and water with a little yeast. It
takes about 5 minutes to make and is well worth the effort if you
plan ahead. The recipe instructions include directions on how to do
this as well as other tips on how to get a crispy crust. One of my
big surprises when I was in school was that I discovered I LOVED
making bread. So I've included a number of tips that I've learned
along the way that have helped me. You may already know about these
and more, and I apologize if it ends up being TMI! Important Note: I
use instant yeast when baking bread, making it much easier to work
with. If you are working with active dry yeast, multiply the instant
yeast amount in the recipe by 1.5 to get the right amount of active
dry yeast to use!
Food52 Review: ChezSuzanne has clearly done her research with this
recipe. As she notes, using a poolish makes for an extra crisp crust
and a lovely, air pocket-filled crumb. The bread is a gorgeous
caramel color from the combination of stout, malt syrup and honey,
and the resulting loaf is chewy with a pleasant tang from the beer.
The sea salt on top lends a savory crunch, and there is plenty of
rosemary to go around (if you prefer a subtler flavor, you can
decrease the amount by half -- we liked it nice and woodsy!). A
couple of notes: we skipped the scale when separating the dough in
half and eyeballed it (your choice), and our bread took only 25
minutes to bake, so check it well before the 30-minute mark.
Serves: 2 boules
Poolish (Pre-ferment):
Mix the yeast and water together in a small bowl. Add the flour and
mix well with a spoon. Cover and let rest at room temperature at
least 12 hours, ideally overnight.
Before using, check to make sure the yeast has grown as evidenced by
many air bubbles on the surface of the dough and enhanced dough mass.
Rosemary Ciabatta with Stout Beer
Combine the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl of a standing mixer
and mix with a whisk. Add the poolish, beer, malt syrup, olive oil
and honey. If using Active Dry Yeast, add it at this time with the
other wet ingredients. Using the hook attachment, mix for 5 to 7
minutes at the lowest speed. The dough should be wet and sticky to
the touch. If it is too wet, add a little bread flour; if too dry,
add a little more beer. It should be a fairly smooth dough at this stage.
Sprinkle the minced rosemary over the dough and increase the mixer
speed to the next highest level and mix for 2 minutes. When you're
finished, there are two ways to check and see if the dough is ready
for it's first rising: (1) detach the dough hook and pull up on the
dough with the hook to see if the dough is very elastic and moves
with the hook or if the dough breaks/tears; (2) take a piece of dough
the size of 2 large marbles and with your fingers carefully stretch
it out pulling on 4 corners of the dough to see if it stretches or
tears as you pull on the it. If the dough tears fairly easily in
either test, more kneading is necessary. What you're doing in this
stage is to develop the gluten, or elasticity of the dough.
Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover it and place it
someplace warm for the first rising until it doubles in size. This
can take 3 to 3 1/2 hours. During this stage of rising, uncover the
dough each hour and pull up one side of the dough and fold it over on
itself to essentially fold the dough in half. This is done to help
build structure in the bread. Tips if you can't find a warm place for
the dough to rise: heat a cup of water in the microwave oven to
really hot, turn the microwave off and put the bowl of covered dough
in the microwave with the cup of water. Or place the covered bowl
near the stove if you're cooking, (being careful that it doesn't get too hot!).
Weigh the dough and divide in half to form 2 boules or loaves.
Loosely pre-shape each boule or loaf and place on a parchment lined
baking sheet(s). Cover with a towel and plastic wrap and let rest for
10 - 20 minutes.
Perform final shaping of the boules or loaves on a lightly floured
board. Place back on the parchment lined baking sheet(s) for the 2nd
rising. Re-cover with a towel and plastic and let rise for 1 to 1 1/2
hours. Preheat the oven to 450F. I place a pizza stone in the oven on
the rack I plan to use and an empty metal pan in the bottom of the
oven. If using the pizza stone, allow time for the oven to be at 450F
for about an hour so that the stone is completely preheated.
Score the boules or loaves with an oiled razor blade, spray lightly
with water, sprinkle with the fleur de sel and place the baking sheet
on top of the pizza stone. The pizza stone will help keep the baking
sheet at a constant temperature while the bread bakes. Just before
closing the oven door, throw a bunch of ice cubes or cold water into
the hot metal pan at the bottom of the oven to create a little steam.
Bake the bread for about 30 minutes. In the first 10 minutes of
baking, open the oven door just long enough to squirt some water on
the sides of the oven with a squirt bottle. If you don't have one,
just get your hands wet and fling the water at the sides of the oven
to create steam. Do this 3 times, but not after the first 10 minutes
of baking. During the last 5 minutes of baking, open the oven door. A
crisper crust is encouraged by shots of steam in the beginning of
baking, and by a dry oven at the end.
The bread is ready when it's internal temperature reaches 200F. To
check, I pull the boule from the oven and stick a probe into the bottom.
Because this is a wet bread, especially compared to french bread, let
it cool before serving.
Review: Great recipe that made a really tasty bread! I especially
appreciated the tips and tricks included in the recipe. They were
very helpful for a bread beginner like me.
Review: This bread was amazing! I was a bit skeptical that it would
bake properly (the dough was so wet!) but the end result was
fantastic. Two loaves didn't last an hour in a house of 4...
Question: Where do you get Malt syrup?
Response: Beer supply store or Amazon. Can be light or dark or very
dark. Choose wisely.
Review: UPDATE! Bread turned out AMAZING. Yielded 2 beautiful 1lb
loaves. Loved the salt crunch on the outside, loved the soft inside,
loved the complex flavor. Still airy even with 15% whole wheat flour.
Review: Yay!!!!! I'm so glad it worked out for you!!!! I love the
idea of subbing molasses for the malt syrup. Great idea. Thanks so
much for letting me know.
Review: Mine is on the second rise and almost ready to go in the
oven. I subbed molassus for the malt syrup and I used about 3 oz of
whole wheat bread flour to give it more texture. I ended up adding
about an oz of beer and had a perfect dough. Sticky, but not super
wet. Had no trouble shaping it, though it is rather subject to
gravity. Not sure how loaf like it will be after this rise. I also
eyeballed the split, but weighed everything else. We'll see what happens!
Review: Just a few comments to the author and a few to the comments.
Please use only one unit of measure. Grams or oz. Either will work
but both will not. You might also want to use bakers percent as this
is scalable. Commenters, ciabatta is a ver wet dough and not meant to
be shaped in a traditional sense. Flour your table well, flour the
dough in its bulk ferment bin or bowl. Dump out onto table. Flour the
top well. Cut shapes once the dough flattens out naturally and put on
well floured peel and bake on stone. Should be slipper shape, hence the name.
Review: My dough was super wet, too. Couldn't even shape it. Used
just 10 oz of poolish and added additional flour during the mixing.
Instead of using a loaf pan, I used the Lahey dutch oven method: heat
the oven with a dutch oven inside and then place the dough inside the
very hot pot and cook covered for the first 20 min. Uncover to finish
the cooking. No need to spray with water or use ice since the wetness
of the dough and the heat of the dutch oven create enough steam to
create a great crust. I used molasses instead of malt syrup and that
seemed to work.
Review: Made these last night for our Easter brunch today and
couldn't help but cut into them this morning to slather with honey butter. Yum!
I'm not a frequent bread baker, and rarely use my standing mixer for
kneading when I do bake bread. For the first time, the kneading
performed by the hook jammed the bowl deep in the stand, and I had a
hell of a time getting the damn thing out.
I will say that it was worth it! Delicous bread :)
(and I was so glad to see that golden syrup worked as a substitution
for malt syrup - it's what I had on hand, so that's what I used!)
Review: Wow - this was wonderful bread! I couldn't find malt syrup,
so used golden syrup instead - I think it probably didn't have as
strong a flavor as the malt syrup would add, but it still tasted
delicious. The stout gives a lovely brown color, and the texture was
very nice - small bubbles and enough denseness and airness to give a
lovely, chewy loaf. I forgot to fold the dough over on itself during
the first rising, but this didn't seem to cause any problems, the
bread turned out great. Would love to try this again, with some
different beers and maybe even different herb flavors.
Response: I'm so glad you liked it so much! And thanks so much for
the feedback - I really appreciate it. And I'm so glad golden syrup
worked as a good substitute for the malt syrup. Is it a sweet syrup?
Question: Beautiful recipe. There are just two in our household and
we don't eat a ton of bread so I was wondering if I could freeze a
loaf. If so, would it be best to freeze the dough, and if so, at what
stage, or the finished product. Thanks for your thoughts!
Response: Thanks so much melissav!! There are only 2 now in my
household so I totally understand. There are 3 good options for
freezing: (1) (my personal favorite) You can bake the bread 75% of
the way done and then freeze it. When ready to eat it, bring to room
temp and complete the baking. (2) (my least favorite) freeze unbaked
dough for up to 2 weeks after shaping it, but you might want to use a
little more yeast (rule of thumb is 10-20% more) to compensate for
the freezing damage to fermentation. The longer you plan to freeze
the dough the closer to the 20% you want to use. (3) Bake it 100% and
then freeze. Note: Freezing unbaked dough will sacrifice the most in
flavor and fermentation. But if you do it, make sure you've done your
final shaping. Hope this helps! And hope you enjoy the bread!
Review: I confess I've made this bread also with a food processor as
well as a stand mixer. I have one that has a "dough" button, and
while I was concerned it might work the dough too much and become too
tough, it was fine. Don't know if that might be an option? I should
add that the FP didn't give me nearly as much control over the dough
as the stand mixer did, but in a pinch it can work.
S(Internet address):
https://food52.com/recipes/3967-rosemary-ciabatta-with-stout-beer
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Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 164 Calories; 2g Fat (8.7%
calories from fat); 5g Protein; 31g Carbohydrate; trace Dietary
Fiber; 0mg Cholesterol; 355mg Sodium. Exchanges: 2 Grain(Starch); 0
Lean Meat; 0 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.
NOTES : 2019 - 0407