Ciabatta Bread

This weekend Dylan and I baked a lot. We made sourdough French bread, but I'm not thrilled with it and will wait to post about French bread. We baked a sweet orange flavored focaccia. And we baked chocolate chip cookies.

We baked the rustic Ciabatta bread in the March/April 09 issue of Cooks Illustrated. It's pictured above. I'm posting a link but unless you subscribe to Cooks Illustrated online, you'll not be able to access this recipe (and their video) after April.

It turned out great and both loaves were eaten in two days!

Instead of the Biga (1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, 1/8 tsp of instant yeast, and 1/2 cup water at room temperature, I used 1 cup of my sourdough starter mixed with 1/8 tsp of yeast.)

The dough:
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp table salt
3/4 cup water at room temperature
1/4 cup milk at room temperature.

Place the Biga and dough ingredients in the mixing bowl. Use the paddle attachment to mix on low until a shaggy dough forms at about one minute of mixing. Then mix on medium-low until the dough becomes a uniform mass on the paddle - about 4 - 6 minutes. Change to dough hook and knead on medium about 10 minutes.

Put dough in a bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise about an hour, until doubled.

When dough has doubled, spray cooking spray on a bowl scraper and fold the dough over itself, turning the bowl 90 degrees each time for 8 folding operations. Cover again with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 more minutes. Repeat the folding and turning, replace the wrap and let rise yet another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 450, preferably with a baking stone in it.

Cut two 12 X 6 inch pieces of parchment paper and flour them well. Flour counter well and turn dough out onto it. Cut dough into two parts with a bench knife. Flour hands well and press dough into 12 X 6 inch shape. Fold the shorter sides of the dough toward center, overlapping them like a letter to form a 7X4 inch loaf. Repeat with other half of the dough.

Transfer each loaf seam down to parchment sheets, dust with flour, cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Slide parchment with loaves onto wooden pizza peel. Using floured fingers, poke surface of each loaf to form 10X6 rectangle. Spray the loaves with water.

Slide loaves with parchment onto baking stone and bake spraying loaves with water twice more during the first 5 minutes of baking time.

Transfer to a wire rack, discard parchment, and cool loaves to room temperature.

I liked this recipe but remember an even better ciabatta from Nancy Silverton's La Brea Bakery cookbook. I'm going to try it the next time I'm in the ciabatta mood.

Delicious! Dylan ate his for the rest of the afternoon. In the picture below he kept a piece going while he played trains.

Making Dough Bunnies and Turtles with Dylan

We made rabbits and turtles today and they were both cute and delicious!

Here's the recipe, adapted from a recipe in The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones (now out of print - so no link to it).

• 1 T active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1/3 cup local honey
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup light cream or milk (we used 1/8 cup half and half and 1/8 cup whole milk)
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1 tsp grated orange peel (we grated a whole orange - and used all of it - a little more than 1 tsp)
• 2 1/2 - 3 cups white flour

Put yeast in a medium bowl with warm water and honey. When dissolved add eggs, vanilla, milk/cream, salt, butter and orange peel. Beat until mixed. Stir in 2 1/2 cups of flour. Switch to dough hook and knead both in the mixer and more on the counter - about 6 minutes or so, adding flour as needed.

Let rise as in picture below for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. As you know, doughs with eggs and sugar take longer to rise than other recipes.


Divide dough into four parts. Cut parts of the dough off for ears, tails, etc. We used the bench knife for that. Shape the creatures you want and put them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. You may add raisins, pine nuts, whatever as eyes, noses, etc. Here's Dylan adding dried cherries for eyes to his turtles.


Allow the critters to rise again for about an hour or so. Then brush with an egg wash before putting into the oven. I also took a serrated sharp knife and cut a design in the turtle's "shell."


Note: You may need water to help glue the appendages to the body of the roll.

Bake at 350 for 20 - 25 minutes. If you have thin extremities, you may need to cover them in foil as the baking proceeds.



These look cute and taste fabulous - the orange and the honey work well together to make a delicious roll/sculpture.

Making Focaccia Bread with Rosemary

Years ago my mother got sourdough starter from San Francisco. It was supposedly over 100 years old at the time. She kept it going by feeding it and using it regularly. When I got out of college and was on my own, she gave me some of the starter. Now I'm a grandma and the starter is about 140 years old.

Today I made focaccia bread with the starter. The recipe won't be so easy to share because I can't give you the starter.

Many cookbooks today have recipes for short-term starters - such as mixing 1 tsp active dry yeast with 1/2 cup warm water and 1/4 cup of flour. Stir this together and leave it for about an hour. It should be bubbly and good to use at that time.

Here's how I made the focaccia:

• Stir 1 tsp active dry yeast into 1 cup warm water and let sit for about 10 minutes.
• Put 3/4 cup sourdough starter in the mixing bowl.
• Add the yeast mixture and 3 T olive oil. Stir together well.
• Add about 3 - 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 3 T finely chopped rosemary leaves, 2 tsp coarse sea salt.
• Change to the dough hook when needed.
• Sprinkle some flour on the counter and knead a little by hand.
• Put dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 1 1/4 hour.
• Turn risen dough onto oiled cookie sheet with sides (11 X 17) and flatten it to fill the pan.
• Allow to rise again about another hour.
• About 30 minutes before baking, preheat oven to 425.

If you have a baking stone, that really helps this bread cook well. When bread has risen, use the tips of your fingers to dimple the dough.

Drizzle the bread with 2 T extra virgin olive oil and 1 to 1 1/4 tsp coarse sea salt.

Put sprigs of fresh rosemary all over the surface.

Put bread in oven and spray the oven walls with cold water from a spritzer bottle three times every three minutes during the first 10 minutes of baking.

Bake in total for about 20 - 25 minutes. During the last 10 minutes you can put the bread directly on the baking stone (I always forget to, but it crisps the bottom).

Toasted Pine Nut Bread from Hensperger

Dylan and I were adventurous today. We made bread with toasted pine nuts! This recipe is from Hensperger's book: Bread for All Seasons. It's almost March and this is one of the March recipes.

First you preheat the oven to 325. Spread 1 1/2 cups pine nuts in a single layer on an ungreased cookie sheet. Toast in the oven for 12 minutes, stirring once during the process. Don't let the nuts get dark. Remove from the oven and cool.

Sprinkle 2 packages of yeast and a pinch of brown sugar over 1/4 cup of warm water. Let it stand for about 10 minutes to begin proofing.

Put the pine nuts in a blender or food processor with 1 cup whole-wheat flour and process until it's like coarse meal.
It should look like this mixture below.

In the mixer, combine 1 cup warm water, 2 T brown sugar, 1 cup warm milk, 2 T of butter, melted, and the remaining 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour. Beat about 1 minute. Add the yeast and the nut flour mix. Beat another minute. Then gradually add flour - about 3 - 3 1/2 cups - about 1/2 cup at a time until a soft dough forms.

Turn the dough out and knead it until firm and springy, adding as little flour as possible. Place in a greased container and allow to rise for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Divide the risen dough into two portions. Form each into a round. Place the loaves seam side down on a greased or parchment lined cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise again - about 50 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425. Slash the tops of the loaves with sharp knife. Don't make the cuts more than 1/4 inch deep. Put the loaves in the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 400. Bake for about 40 - 45 minutes.


The is a rich, tender, interesting bread. We ate half a loaf for dinner.

The Challenge of Challah

We had a lot of eggs and decided it would be fun to make challah. I looked for the egg-iest recipe I could find. Most of the recipes I found called for two eggs. The way we did it was with four eggs. I think traditionally challah has no milk products in it but I didn't have good vegetable oil so I used half butter and half oil.

After I made this bread, one of my friends who is Jewish, told me that Challah has seven ingredients and usually seven eggs. Next time I'm making it by her recipe!

Here's what we did:
1 cup water
1 T sugar
1 T honey
1 T active dry yeast

• Pour the water into mixing bowl and stir in the honey and sugar. Add the yeast and one cup flour and let this proof for about 10 minutes.

4 eggs
3 T oil
3 T butter, melted
1 T salt
5 1/2 - 6 1/2 cups flour

• Beat the eggs until light.
  
• Beat in the oil and butter.
  
• Add this to the yeast mixture.
  
• Blend in the salt and gradually add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time.
  
• Knead the dough both with the dough hook and by hand for 3 or 4 minutes.
• Put the dough in a greased bowl and allow to rise until doubled - about 1 1/2 - 2 hours.
• Cut the dough in half. This makes two smaller loaves.
• You can divide each half into three or four strands for braiding. I haven't ever braided four strands so I did that, following a diagram in a 30 year old cookbook.
• Again allow the bread to rise until doubled.
  
• Then brush surfaces with an egg wash made of 1 egg mixed with 2 tsp water.
• Bake at 350 or 35 - 40 minutes.
  

Dylan likes to pick the eggs we use.



Here he's pouring the egg mixture into the yeast mixture.



The braided loaves go into the oven.



I planned to take a picture of the two loaves but when I remembered to do it the next day, my family had eaten all of one loaf and had sliced into the second one. Here's what's left. We used the challah for French toast on Sunday morning - it was scrumptious.

Norwegian Rye Bread

Dylan and I seem to be on a rye bread kick lately. So today we made Norwegian Rye Bread from A World of Breads by Doris Casella.



2 packages yeast
1/3 cup warm water
2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup molasses
2 T caraway seed
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 cups white flour
2 cups rye flour
2 cups whole wheat flour

With those ingredients, I'm sure you can imagine that this is a dark bread.

• Dissolve the yeast in the water.
  
• Heat the buttermilk (I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds).
  
• Add salt, molasses, caraway seed, melted butter and dissolved yeast to the buttermilk.
  
• Blend these ingredients and then start stirring in the flours gradually.
  
• Knead the bread until it is smooth and elastic.
  
• Place in buttered bowl to rise. Takes about 1 1/2 hours.

• When the dough is doubled, turn it out onto a floured board.
  
• Divide it into 2 parts. Shape each into a loaf and place in a buttered loaf pan.
  
• Cover and let rise until doubled again - about 1 1/4 hours.
  
• Brush the top of the loaf with melted butter.
  
• Bake in a 325 oven for 45 minutes until done.

It's beautiful and tastes rich and delicious.

Parmesan Pull-aparts from Gourmet

Clearly I've been on a roll kick, inspired by Gourmet's issue this month. These are the only rolls that don't appear in the pictures in the magazine, but they sounded so good, I decided to try them sight unseen!

Here are the ingredients (which you can also find on Epicurious)

2 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp honey (I use the honey from my own beehives)
2/3 cup warm milk
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour plus 2 T for sprinkling
1 1/4 cups grated (with a rasp) Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 tsp salt
3 large eggs
5 T unsalted butter, cut into T pieces and softened
1 T water

• First you grate the cheese - lots of it.

• Stir together the yeast, honey, and 1/3 cup warm milk in mixer bowl and let stand until the yeast starts to foam.
  
• Whisk together the flour and the grated cheese and the salt (see picture above).
  
• Mix into the yeast mixture along with the remaining 1/3 cup milk at low speed.
  
• Increase the speed to medium and beat in 2 eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each.
  
• Beat well, about 3 minutes until a soft dough forms.
• Beat in the butter, one T at a time, until the dough is elastic, about 2 minutes - this is where I had trouble. The butter just didn't want to beat in. I changed to the dough hook, but that made it more difficult - see the picture below. I ended up going back to the paddle, which was what Gourmet recommended, but it was difficult because the dough was solid and in the shape at which I usually use the hook. The butter mixing was very difficult.
• Put the dough in a greased bowl, sprinkle it with the remaining 2 T flour, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
  

• When the dough has doubled, turn it out onto a floured surface and cut it into 12 equal pieces.
  
• Roll each into a ball.
  
• Arrange the rolls in a buttered 9X2 inch round cake pan and cover with a non-terry kitchen towel.
  
• Allow to double - 1 - 1 1/4 hours.

• Preheat oven to 375 with rack in the middle.
  
• Whisk together the remaining egg with 1 T water and brush over the tops of the rolls.
  
• Bake until golden brown - 20 - 25 minutes.
  
• Loosen edges of rolls from pan with sharp knife (this is to take care of cooked egg gluing it to the edges of the pan).
  
• Invert rolls onto a rack, reinvert and cool for 20 minutes.

These are DELICIOUS - well worth the frustration with the butter mixing in (or not, as the case may be).