Ciabatta phone home...

I made some more spent grain bread (loaves this time) and a batch of ciabatta last weekend. Ciabatta can be fun to make because it is so oddly shaped, and I found most of the shaping instructions pretty strange. Apparently, ciabatta means slipper, which I do find kind of weird and slightly unappealing, despite my love of both food and shoes. This is my second attempt at ciabatta, which is not too difficult to make.  It is another bread that requires no kneading, just a lot of intense mixing and then folding of really wet dough. This is again out of BBA - I swear one of these days I'll make some bread from a different book. I think next time I will increase the hydration percentage to get more of the giant holes in the crumb. The dough was fairly easy for me to work with using the formula from the book.

One thing I don't have are baker's linens. When I need to prop things up for a rise (like ciabatta or baguettes) I improvise with parchment paper and a bunch of Adam's old shirts underneath to help support the bread while it rises. It looks weird, but it does the trick.

Ciabatta is also cool because right before you bake it, you stretch it out into the "slipper" shape. I haven't come across any other breads that are handled this way right before going in the oven. Usually, you want to be very gentle after proofing so the bread doesn't deflate, but these loaves have enough oven spring to handle it. Those are some giant slippers.

Then, as the bread was cooling innocently on the counter, Adam noticed that we weren't alone.

Once you see the E.T. hiding in the bread, it is impossible to unsee him. It is perhaps the creepiest baked item I have ever made, though I have had some pretty bizarre things made for me (Erin, I'm looking at you). He stared at us all night, and I considered sacrificing him in the name of eating fresh bread, but I felt bad. He had no arms or legs, no way of defending himself. A few days later, though, without a thought, I came home sort of hammered and toasted him with some butter. Compared to his twin loaf, however, I think he had it pretty good. That loaf didn't even get a story.

 Ciabatta RIP 1/16/10 - 1/22/2010