ångel food

We got a grill pan and panini press set for Christmas and have experimented with a few different kinds of bread and filling combinations. Inspired by this recipe from Food Network, my husband even tried a croissant panini one afternoon; despite the fact that he accidentally let it cook too long, after he peeled off the burned exterior he said it was pretty good. We found a brand of ciabatta sold in our grocery store’s bakery that worked out really well, but it was sold out when I went back to pick up a second loaf.

I’m generally not a fan of baking. For some reason, it seems like it’s so much easier to muck things up when making a baked good as opposed to just cooking a meal. I also don’t like having to work on a recipe in spurts; I’d rather spend an hour or two in the kitchen doing active work than have to check in on the progress of my rising dough every so often, punch it down, and wait for it to rise again. Despite all of this, I decided I needed to try making my own ciabatta loaf.

The recipe is pretty simple, but it requires a stand mixer and needs to be made about a day or two in advance of when you’d want to use it. It’s the first baking recipe I’ve tried that uses an Italian starter called a biga. You might be able to hand knead the dough, but it was very sticky when I made it and you’re not supposed to add in a lot of extra flour. I had thought that shaping the dough into the loaf would be a bit of a production, but it took less than five minutes, and the illustrations were really easy to follow.

Rustic Italian Bread

This recipe requires a standing mixer to make the dough, a spray-bottle filled with water for spritzing, a rectangular baking stone, and an instant-read thermometer for gaging doneness. It also requires a bit of patience—the biga, which gives the bread flavor, must be made 11 to 27 hours before the dough is made.

Makes 1 large loaf, about 2 1/2 pounds.

Original Source: America’s Test Kitchen
+ Cook’s Illustrated, 01/2003 (premium content)
+ The New Best Recipe pp. 746-750

Click here to view Rustic Italian Bread pictures »

Leftovers: If you find that you have too much bread to use before it goes stale, freeze the excess for later use. I wrap chunks or slices of bread in aluminum foil and then put inside a freezer Ziploc bag for long-term storage. To thaw, unwrap and let sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes; alternatively, wrap the bread in paper towels and microwave on full power for 30 seconds (longer for large chunks of frozen bread). It’s not as good as fresh, but it revives pretty well, particularly if toasted in the oven. If the bread goes stale before freezing it, don’t throw it away; slightly stale bread is excellent for making bread crumbs.

Don’t let the length of the recipe on paper fool you — it’s really simple. In fact, it’s mostly “Do five minutes of work, wait an hour or so. Repeat.” Here are a few extra tips:

• Turning the dough: When I went to turn the dough, I realized I didn’t have the appropriate tool. I have a 6-inch metal bench scraper, but it didn’t conform well to the curve of my bowl. The plastic scrapers I had were much too narrow. Instead, I improvised by using a silicone spatula. I had to fold each side over in parts, usually two or three, but it seemed to work fine. Also, if you reference their step-by-step illustrations at the bottom for turning the dough, it should be noted that you aren’t supposed to end up with the dough in the center of the bowl after the final step. I stared at those pictures for several minutes before I decided what to do: put the scraper under the dough on the side closest to you, and then lift and fold over to match the other side. The dough will now be folded in half, although it will no longer be resting in the center of the bowl.
• Be liberal with the flour: When they say “Dust work surface liberally with flour”, they aren’t kidding. I thought I was being liberal, but it turned out I was still skimping. If you don’t coat the thing in flour, it won’t cooperate when you go to form the loaf.
• Leave ample time for rising: Don’t start making the dough at 8pm, because you will have to stay up until about 3am before it’s done!
• Using smaller parchment paper: The parchment paper I buy comes in 15-inch wide rolls, and you’re supposed to end up with a loaf that is about 16 inches wide. To get around this, I cut my parchment large enough to let the loaf rest on the diagonal.
• Baking stones: I’m not sure why they call specifically for a rectangular baking stone; my only guess is that round stones tend to be smaller. Our large round stone worked just fine. You just have to make sure your stone will accommodate a 16-inch loaf.
• Preheating the oven: I only preheated the oven to 500°F during the final 20 minutes of rising time. The recipe is a little vague about this, mentioning the preheat before the final hour of rising time.

The bread is pretty good and about what we expected, although the crust got a little darker than what I’m used to seeing from the grocery store’s bakery. That seems to be pretty typical when I make breads, though. Next time I make it, I might use convection instead or shorten the cook time. It’s also possible that the crust browned a bit more because I didn’t have a spray bottle, and so instead I squeezed drops of water onto the loaf with a wet paper towel before putting it in the oven.

Tags: Leftovers, Medium Difficulty

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Bread. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.