After dinner tonight, I felt like baking again. Specifically, I wanted to bake bread. Ciabatta seemed a good choice. After all, every time we eat at Panera, I usually order Tomato and Mozzarella Panini, which uses ciabatta. Happily, I’ve got the book with the recipe for it.
Acknowledgement: The full and original version of this recipe can be found in The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cup lukewarm water
- 1/2 tablespoon granulated yeast
- 3/4 tablespoon kosher salt
- 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
You’ll also need a pizza peel, a baking stone and a broiler tray.
Mix all the ingredients in a big bowl, then cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest for 2 hours. When you’re ready to do some baking, wet your hands and shape the dough into a ball. Do not dust your hands with flour. Wet hands will supposedly help you “achieve the very moist crumb”. Elongate the ball into an oval. You know how slippers are shaped? That’s the shape you’re aiming for.
Put your baking stone in the oven’s middle shelf and the broiler tray on the lowest shelf. Preheat your oven to 450°F.
Let it rest on a pizza peel for 20 minutes.
According to the recipe, I should’ve coated the pizza peel with flour. But since our pizza peel is new and still pretty, I didn’t want to dust it with flour at all. So yes, I went against what the recipe advised and used parchment paper. I don’t think it made a difference in the final product, really.
After allowing the dough to rest, dust the top with flour. It looks like a really weirdly shaped flat slipper.
Put the loaf on the baking stone. Pour 1 cup of hot water into the broiler tray, and close the oven door fast. (You don’t want to get burned.) Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Once done, take out the loaf from the oven and allow the loaf to cool on a cooling rack.
And here it is, my freshly baked Ciabatta!
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