Today, a group of my friends, who love to cook and eat, and me had a Ciabatta making day at my house. There were three stages to it.
Stage 1: On Wed, the night before, I had to make the starter, basically mixing flour, water, yeast, sugar and salt and letting it rise overnight. There were possibly 10 people coming to participate, so I tripled the recipe to make 12 loaves. So, I added everything together in a big bowl, covered and set it aside in the kitchen. A little later, Ken went into the kitchen and yelled out that he thought that the yeast was working, that I should come to see. When I went into the kitchen, the bowl which had had a flat piece of aluminum foil covering the bowl and crimped to the bowl rim when I had left the kitchen, now looked like one of those old Jiffy Pop popcorn pans that poofed up (or a muffin). Here is a picture of an old Jiffy pop pan blown up. I would have gotten a picture of my starter "blowing up", but it was an emergency, with the dough spreading out over my countertop. :)
The starter was running down the side and making a mess. So, I divided it into two bowls and set it aside again.
Stage 2: The next morning, at 9 am, everyone came over to do the next step. Tran, who had made Ciabatta before and gave us the recipe, explained the process and added the next batch of flour and we set it aside to rise again for 2 hours. Here are a couple of pictures:
Stage 1: On Wed, the night before, I had to make the starter, basically mixing flour, water, yeast, sugar and salt and letting it rise overnight. There were possibly 10 people coming to participate, so I tripled the recipe to make 12 loaves. So, I added everything together in a big bowl, covered and set it aside in the kitchen. A little later, Ken went into the kitchen and yelled out that he thought that the yeast was working, that I should come to see. When I went into the kitchen, the bowl which had had a flat piece of aluminum foil covering the bowl and crimped to the bowl rim when I had left the kitchen, now looked like one of those old Jiffy Pop popcorn pans that poofed up (or a muffin). Here is a picture of an old Jiffy pop pan blown up. I would have gotten a picture of my starter "blowing up", but it was an emergency, with the dough spreading out over my countertop. :)
The starter was running down the side and making a mess. So, I divided it into two bowls and set it aside again.
Stage 2: The next morning, at 9 am, everyone came over to do the next step. Tran, who had made Ciabatta before and gave us the recipe, explained the process and added the next batch of flour and we set it aside to rise again for 2 hours. Here are a couple of pictures:
Here are Helga and Kamala helping:
Stage 3: The Ciabatta had to rise for 2 hours, so we went off to Zumba for an hour. We had our new Zumba DVD's, which taught us the actual dance steps of Meringue, Salsa, Cumbia, Regaetton, Bellydance, etc. It was a lot of fun!
Stage 4: Have brunch! We needed to fill another hour so why not eat? I fixed: Garlic and Roasted Tomato Corn Muffins
Lemon Ziti
Baked chicken marinated in a yogurt and spice mixture with Tammy's apple and cranberry chutney served on the side
Prasuna made a fruit salad
Tran made mini banana nut muffins with a cream on top
Kamala made double chocolate muffins
Tammy made a coffee cake
Brunch was delicious!
Stage 5: Time to dump the wet bread mix onto a well floured surface, divide it out and stretch it into portions.
Here it is in the oven:
Here it is finished:
And Tran showing the air tunnels:
Here are two pictures of the Ciabatta crew:
Nice ending: Eating warm ciabatta with melting butter :)
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