Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters
Unless this is your first visit here, you probably know what a big fan I am of the San Francisco Baking Institute, where pros and bread geeks like me go to become better bakers.
Now you can hear my friend Jeremy Shapiro’s interview with Michel Suas, SFBI’s founder and artisan baking luminary, on Jeremy’s blog, Stir the Pots.
Go listen! (And while you’re there, check out Jeremy’s other interviews with bakers, chefs, and other stars of the food world.)
So, how was your day yesterday? Let me tell you about mine. (Be warned, it’s a long story.)
It started well enough. Finding myself in my minimalist sometime-kitchen with a few bottles of Guinness Extra Stout and Saint Patrick’s Day on the horizon, I thought I would try a bread that made an appearance in last week’s YeastSpotting: Mary’s (One Perfect Bite) Rye Bread with Guinness Stout and Fennel Seeds.
I mix it up (with a couple of adaptations); so far so good. I must say the aroma of the dough catches my attention, and I know this is going to be one mighty bread. I decide to go with two larger loaves rather than Mary’s three, and here’s where things start getting interesting. In this kitchen we have no brotforms, no bannetons; in fact, we have no baskets of any kind except a couple of plastic chip baskets that are way too small for these two-pound loaves. But we do have a couche; let’s see, here it is. Uh-oh:
The mice have been here, apparently. And let’s just say I cleaned the couche up a bit before the photo. Normally I don’t wash it, but I think I will make an exception in this case. Before I use it again.
It must be my old age catching up with me; I just realized I forgot to post the winner of the Fibrament Stone giveaway:
Congratulations to Lisa, whose new blog about handcrafted cards is worth checking out: dahlhouse designs.
Even if you do not have a new blog about handcrafted cards, you can still have a stone; order from Fibrament!
If you like assertively sour bread and a dark, flavorful crust, you will like this bread. If you don’t like one or both of those things, please skip it.
Although I started out thinking this bread would be an adaptation of the Normandy Rye from Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery, it turned out this bread didn’t want to be that. Instead it wanted to be more sour and more rye. Although at about 41% rye flour I suppose it qualifies as only a light rye, the flavor is not light at all.
The crust on this wants to get really really dark, and you should let it. The crust in the photo below looks like it is burned, but it isn’t. The sugars (which are in extra abundance here from the cider) have caramelized to give the crust a deep, sweet flavor that contrasts very nicely with the sour crumb.
I have seen different methods for shaping ciabatta; the method I use is really more cutting than shaping.
In contrast with most other doughs, which are assertively de-gassed during shaping, ciabatta wants to be handled very gently to maintain all those lovely bubbles that have developed during fermentation.
(If you can’t see the video here, view it on YouTube.)
Folding is a powerful technique for strengthening a dough. Wet doughs such as ciabatta can particularly benefit from folding, but can also be challenging to fold. The key is using plenty of flour on the counter (go ahead, make a mess!); excess flour should be brushed away so you don’t get streaks of unincorporated flour in your loaves.
(If you can’t see the video here, view it on YouTube.)