07/04/07

Ciabatta with Pesto

There were plenty of things to do this weekend but somehow they didn't happen. One of the breads I wanted to try this week was to do another round of lean whole-wheat bread to test out a hypothesis. That did not happen because the bag of whole-wheat flour that I had bought at Vivomart turned out to be made from soft wheat. The clue to this was that the recipe printed on the bag was for making pastry. I also wanted to bake some sourdough loaves as it has been a while that I had done that but due to time constraints and since I had missed a time window for making the starter, I had to abandon that also. In the end, I settled for Ciabatta and since I had some plans to turn my backyard into a small herb garden, I got the wife to buy back handfuls of sweet basil and Vietnamese Coriander, also called Laksa leaves. These leaves are used to garnish a delightful noodle dish called Laksa here.

I found a way to save money by buying herbs from the market and use the waste stem cuttings to grow my herb garden. This is way cheaper than buying the plants at the nursery. This way, I can have my cake and eat it too.

The Vietnamese Coriander was used for making the Pesto. I made the Pesto with Pistachios, roasted garlic, the herbs, Parmesan cheese, Himalayan Pink Salt and olive oil. These were pounded in my mortar and pestle which I had inherited from my grandmother. Its deja vu but then, Ciabatta was the bread that got me hooked to bread baking. For this, I have to thank Kyle from Kyle's Kitchen for his generous pictorial 'lessons' on making Ciabatta. When I recommended the site to friends, they commented that there was nothing there except pictures. To me, each picture is a thousand words. They spoke volumes as far as I was concerned. For the first time, I saw what the Stretch and Fold did to the dough. Thanks Kyle.