Ciabatta Bread Recipe -- Artisan Bread

Let me tell you one thing that I really Love...Bread. Well I don't know about you guys but I just LOVE BREAD. Specially HOMEMADE BREAD,Mmmm so good! One of my aunties use to make really yummy bread from scratch and just using her hands. Wow! I remember when I was a little girl and she used to give me and my cousins a big cup of hot chocolate served with buttered slices of her homemade bread and peach marmalade on the cool afternoons of winter time in Argentina. She was and still "my favorite auntie in the whole world.

Anyway a couples weeks ago I was looking for a good and easy recipe for a Bread called Ciabatta.Is an Italian bread made from flour and yeast. As far as I know the crust, the crumb texture and ingredients of the bread varies depending of every region of Italy. Some ciabatta bread has a firm crust and dense crumb texture, and others have a crisper crust and more open texture.

So after looking for a while, I couldn't find the one that I wanted. I was looking for something easy but good at the same time. I didn't want to spend all day making one loaf of bread!. For some reason all recipes for Ciabatta Bread that I could find, required machine kneading (which I don't have) and complicated techniques that I couldn't quite understand. So I kept looking until finally last weekend I got it, yes!.I found the recipe on a (new-to my knowledge)-website called Famous French Desserts (is a lovely website with a variety of artisan bread and desserts) and I tried the recipe today! ....What can I say,"THIS RECIPE" makes all my dreams "about Ciabatta Bread" come true!.



Ciabatta Bread --Artisan Bread
(adapted from Famous French Desserts)
1 large loaf or 2 small

3 cups / ( 300 gr ) Flour
1 pack / ( 9 gr )Active Dry Yeast
1 tsp. Salt
4 Tbsp olive oil

1-Sift flour into a large bowl. Mix in salt with hand. Move the ingredients to the sides of the bowl, creating a large "well" (an empty space) in the middle.

2-Pour the yeast into the "well" and pour 1 cup of lukewarm water over the yeast. Sprinkle about 1 tbsp. of flour over top. Wait (about 10 minutes) for bubbles to appear in the yeast.

3-Once the bubbles have appeared, add the 4 Tbsp. olive oil you can start to mix together the ingredients (hands work best, but you can use a mixer) to form the dough. The best way to do this is to Gradually Incorporate the flour that is "waiting" on the sides of the bowl. Doing it all at once will be too difficult. So, go bit by bit, if it's too liquid, just add a bit more flour at the end. You should finish this "pre-kneading" stage with a round, firm ball of dough. Again, if it's too sticky, add a little more flour.

4-Form a loaf that is about 1 inch high. Before baking, sprinkle flour on the top of the loaf. Bake at 215 C / ( 419 F ) until browned (about 30 minutes).Now, try to resist not to eat it all ;)

In the recipe they give these two tips (which I found quite interesting):

Yeast:If your yeast does not bubble, it's no longer active or you did not use lukewarm water. You should start over in this case, Because the bread will not rise.

Freezing: If you are planning on freezing the bread, only bake it for 20 minutes. Wait for it to cool, then wrap in tin foil, put in a plastic bag and freeze. When you want to serve it, just preheat oven to 200 C /( 392 F ), bake inside of foil for 10 minutes and then remove foil and let brown for about 5 minutes.

The recipe did not suggest how to create a bread shape so I started to think how to give my "Bread Dough" a nice and fancy shape and I came up with this idea.

Bread Shape: I rolled out the dough (with a rolling pin) into the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners (about 30-34 cm long and 3 cm thick). Then starting from one of the sides with the longest dimension, roll up the dough so that the final width of the loaf is about 9 cm. The ends should be tucked and smoothed. For the final touch, I used a sharp knife and cut 3 slashes diagonally across the top (or cut as many slashes you like).