Ciabatta Bread Recipe

0 Comment read Ancient Grain, Fresh Milled Flour, High Hydration, Specialty Shape
Ciabatta Bread Recipe

This bread is such a treat. It’s soft, incredibly open, and light in the hand — almost like a bushel of puffy marshmallows bound together by a crust poised to shatter at the slightest pressure. This is a bread that asks to be torn with hands, dunked into best olive oil in the pantry. That is, if you can stop yourself from cutting it in half and sandwiching together all manner of delicious ingredients (I couldn’t, as you’ll see later). I hope this sourdough ciabatta bread recipe becomes a regular in your kitchen as it has been in mine.

Classically, ciabatta is intended to be used for sandwiches, or panino, of all kinds. The smaller ciabatta panini are wildly popular in Italy and even here in the US, and for good reason. The wide footprint of these slippers — ciabatta means slipper in Italian — have a sturdy crust that provides the right platform for ensnaring anything and everything one could conceivably use for a sandwich. As you’ll see later in this post, I found myself making sandwiches with just about everything lying around in my fridge — not to mention all the fresh vegetables from the market.

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Sourdough Baguettes

0 Comment read Specialty Shape
Sourdough Baguettes

I’ve fallen hard for these pointy sticks. Their beautifully exaggerative shape that starts with a thick center and transitions into dangerously sharp instruments at the ends. Colors stretching from the periphery of black to almost-too-light; contrast that elicits stares. A creamy and tender interior that’s so porous it soaks the butter inevitably spread thick during moments of eager anticipation. Pure sourdough baguettes are a tricky thing, I think, but when everything lines up just right all your past shortcomings discovered in testing vanish in an instant. All the trials and tests and tweaks fade away, leaving only a sense of accomplishment — that feeling of satisfaction that only comes when expectation and end result align.

These beautiful baguettes do take concerted effort and practice but the results are absolutely worth the work. Ok, technically these are demi-baguettes given their shorter stature and perhaps reduced dough weight, but the nature of this bread holds to the ideal. The slender shape, thin crust, and delicate interior simply exudes baguette, even if their specs are a little skewed.

I’ve been working on this recipe relentlessly, and if you follow me on Instagram you know this, but all the work put into these revolves around around the simple fact baguettes are just plain challenging. I find that beyond the required fermentation attention, flour selection, hydration adjustments, cold versus warm bulk decisions, and seeking that correct proof point, there’s the matter of coercing the dough delicately into the correct shape. As with many things, they simply require practice. Continue reading →

Einkorn Sourdough Bread

0 Comment read Ancient Grain
Einkorn Sourdough Bread

These days it seems I seldom bake bread comprised of only a single flour. Usually my mind busily weaves together a formula of disparate flours after I decide on an end goal. The end goal is my compass, dictating the direction as I work backwards to make it happen: the flavor from this flour, this one is extra nutritious, add some extensibility with this one, perhaps a bit of color with this other, and perhaps some added strength, if necessary. Lately, though, I’ve been focusing down on a formula comprised in total of ancient einkorn wheat flour. I’ve baked with einkorn many times in the past at less than one hundred percent of the total formula (and my einkorn miche is always my go-to for large dinners), but pushing the percentage of einkorn results in a unique sourdough bread.

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Whole Grain Wheat and Spelt Pan Bread

0 Comment read Ancient Grain, Fresh Milled Flour, Pan Bread, Whole Grain
Whole Grain Wheat and Spelt Pan Bread

A splendid, gentle top-curve from dough that’s proofed just enough. Just enough to still have “energy” to expand upward in the oven, but not so much that it causes an erratic fissure due to the lack of scoring. A balance. Add to that a striking exterior color from a bold bake, the enticing aroma from the use of fresh milled flour, and a speckled oat topping — all contributing to a truly wonderful bread. But beyond all this, it’s one that’s meant to be eaten in thick slices carved from the loaf with a spread of soft butter, toasted and topped with fresh preserves, or used to cobble together a sandwich piled a little too high. When baking this whole grain wheat and spelt pan bread I could have sworn the kitchen smelled of honey… Or perhaps it was my eagerness to eat the result. When you go the distance from raw berries, to fresh milled flour, to baked bread — all the while controlling each part of the transformation1 — it’s easy to get a little antsy, a little impatient, and frankly, a little hungry.

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  1. Or as much control as we’d like to think we have over fermentation.↩

Naturally Leavened Bomboloni (Doughnuts)

0 Comment read Enriched Dough, Other Food, Pastry
Naturally Leavened Bomboloni (Doughnuts)

Our sleep was always broken by a small, three-wheeled cart scurrying down the stone streets with a large megaphone strapped to the roof. Political ramblings poured unrestricted out of that speaker, echoing off buildings and stone-paved streets as it ran down the length of each avenue — faster and louder than I’m sure anyone in our family’s hometown in Southern Italy cared for. Without the desire for air conditioning1, every single house had their window open overnight to let in the cool breeze. And the opportunistic man in the speedy cart was keenly aware of this situation. As a kid traveling to visit family, waking early wasn’t nearly as bad as going to bed early, after all, it just meant you’d get to play sooner. But probably my favorite thing of all, and the reason I secretly hoped that man would drive by even earlier, was it meant heading out early with my brother and dad the local baker for fresh bomboloni.

Back then I didn’t quite appreciate the lives these bakers led. For them to sell fresh baked goods first thing in the morning they likely worked through the night: mixing, folding, shaping dough, and finally baking in the old ovens just as the sun streamed through the city streets. We’d walk in oblivious to all of this, instead focused acutely on which pastry to buy and devour on the walk back. I like to think our enthusiasm for their baked goods somehow validated their long night of hard work. I do know they were there every morning ready to discuss a recent soccer game, wrap the pastry in paper, and send us back on our way.

Naturally leavened bomboloni are essentially sourdough doughnuts (with no sourness). They’re also known as berliner, krapfen, ballen, pączki, donut, and many more names all over the world. It seems everyone at some point figured out that frying enriched dough was incredibly delicious. I’m sure glad they did.

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  1. I still don’t understand this! But then again, I grew up in the US where air conditioning is everywhere without question.↩