07/04/07

Jeffrey Hamelman's Ciabatta

Mistakes were made in both attempts ;(. In my first attempt, I forgot to stretch and dimple the dough before baking. In the second attempt, the oven was preheated at a wrong temperature. I had forgotten to adjust the temperature dial to 550F in my haste.

First attempt: Forgot to stretch and dimple the dough before loading into oven.

Holy Ciabatta Frog Eyes!!

2nd attempt. Wrong oven preheat temperature.

Well, back to the drawing kneading board.

More Ciabatta

My wife has been making sandwiches for the kids' breakfast. Ciabatta is excellent for sandwiches and the bread has many cavities when sliced sideways. The cavities help to trap all the good stuff unlike an ordinary Pan de Mie. It also gave me an excuse to brush up on my Ciabatta baking. My first 2 attemps were marked by mistakes. This time round I made another mistake of not putting the nice side down. Despite my attempts at dimpling the dough, I got an extra spectacular oven spring. This was not really desirable as the holes were too large like my first attempt. The next time round, I want to make sure that I do it sufficiently. The crumb was rather dense and when I compared it to the baguette, I could see the difference. It also meant that I have succeeded in my quest for the correct crumb texture after three long years since I started baking as a hobby.

2 large Ciabatta loaves

Huge holes again.

Should have stretched out and dimpled more.