Crispy Italian bread or Ciabatta
I'm doing a study for fun and my own education, testing recipes for Italian bread like ciabatta and other fluffy white breads of European tradition, like French bread or baguettes. I hope it will give me a grounding in baking and that is why I've chosen the most classical home made wheat bread styles.
I wish I'd made a video because the sound of the crisp but fragile crust yielding and crackling under the serrated bread knife was exquisite.
The previous recipe to work well has been published, also ciabatta style, and the less shining history which preceded it was reported on in that previous article. Suffice it to say, baking fluffy white bread turned out to be really easy compared to sourdough, or working with alternative flours like cassava and sorghum.
So this is another easy bread recipe. Compared to the last there is a pre-ferment in the fridge, the rising stage is shorter and the dough was a little dryer, less than 1:1 with water, and there was steam in the oven. The result had much better lift, a fabulous crunchy crust and a nicer, fuller shape. The quantities have been halved to avoid waste on recipes that do not work. Thus far its been ciabatta recipes, so next I'm moving on to French bread. I've been watching the charming and one of a kind Julia Child to prepare myself and it looks a bit less easy.
Delicious and very easy Italian bread Preparation time: 20 minutes
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Cooking time: at least 35 minutes
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Resting time: 15 hours
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Total time needed: at least 16 hours
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Grade of Difficulty: very easy
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Serves 4
Ingredients for Italian Bread
The pre ferment
Ingredients
Ingredients for the Bread
- 100g or 0.22 of a pound water
- 100g or 0.33 (1/3rd) pounds bread flour
- 1/2 of a teaspoon salt (I used kosher)
Making the Pre Ferment
- Mix all ingredients very thoroughly in a large jar, cover the jar with a cloth and loosely replace the lid.
- Put the jar on the top shelf of the fridge for 12 hours.
How to make this
easy
Italian bread
- Mix all ingredients very thoroughly with the pre ferment in a bowl, cover with a wet cloth to stop a crust forming and let the dough rest for 2 hours.
- Grease a round oven pan lavishly with coconut fat
- Tip the dough into the pan and rest for 45 minutes
- Then pull and fold the dough about five times
- Repeat the 45 minute resting and then the pulling and folding another two times.
- Flip the dough over so that its smooth round side faces upward. Let it rise one last time.
- Heat the oven to 230 degrees Celsius or 446 degrees Fahrenheit, and place a baking tray of water in the bottom.
- When the oven is hot, and slightly steamy, bake the bread for ten minutes, then remove the tray of water, replacing it with a small pan of water (I used a clean sardine tin)
- Bake for another ten minutes, then remove the small pan and bake the bread dry for 5 minutes.
- Switch off the oven and leave the bread in the slowly cooling oven for 10 minutes.
- Remove the bread from the pan and serve hot with butter or allow it to cool for later use.
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