Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

Peter Reinhart’s Poolish Ciabatta, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

I mentioned that I was going to try making Ciabatta from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and that I had a poolish in the fridge. Well, it is done. I think I did it over many days. Who can tell! Who can remember. Okay…if you look at the exif data on my pictures, you can.

I’m not sure why I felt the urge to work with such a wet dough.

I couldn’t even take all the pictures myself (sister the elder and sister-in-law).

And I needed help to do Reinhart’s letter-style folding (sister the elder).

Peter Reinhart’s Poolish Ciabatta, Sliced, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

Making this bread was soothing but I don’t think it came out quite right. The holes aren’t big enough, I don’t think. I read somewhere possibly on thefreshloaf.com that his method seems to let out a lot of gas in the end (especially for the inexperienced namely me) and that Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe from The Bread Bible is much better…so although this was tiring and not necessarily all-rewarding and I was forcibly of the opinion that I would never make this bread again (except maybe for Chennette to taste it) as I wasn’t oh so impressed with it…I’ve sorta changed my mind (others loved it)…I will try hers!

Okay…this might sound kind of negative so I have to qualify, regardless of what I wrote above I myself don’t have much experience with eating ciabatta and I still liked the bread. I just didn’t see what all the work was about and that it was worth it. We all loved it. We happily ate it. And if there was more than a 1/4 loaf left waiting for Chennette to try when she comes here, we’d've sliced it up and made bruschetta…:-)

	A couple days before sister the elder, the first niece and the first nephew came to visit, I ran downstairs with sudden fire and made a poolish. I stirred flour, water, and yeast until the flour was hydrated. The dough needed to be thick like pancake batter. Then you cover it with plastic wrap and leave it until it becomes foamy and bubbly (about 2 to 3 hours). Now refrigerate overnight (at least…I think for the most two days). When ready to make the rest of the dough, take out the poolish about an hour before so that it loses its chill.
	Stir together flour, salt and yeast and then add the poolish and water. I had a tiny little helper (the one that can talk). We scraped that poolish out of the basin and mixed it in the bowl until it became kinda like a ball.
	Then turn the dough out onto a thickly floured surface and knead. You have to resist the temptation to add more flour because it is a wet dough. I’m not sure if mine was right. It’s hard to tell because I think my scale sucks.
	Shape the kneaded dough into a rectangle. Then fold it letter-style (into three equal pieces). I needed help for this. Sister the elder was ready for the task (which is one of the reasons I don’t have pictures of the folding as she was also my co-photographer - extremely wet dough!). After it’s rested for about half-hour, fold it again and let it rest for about 2 hours.
	After a couple hours (or was that an hour and a half?) it should be nicely swollen. It’s time to shape them. Sister the elder was upstairs with her children.
	Because of this dough being so wet and moist, Reinhart says use a “couche” (a floured and oil sprayed linen/white tablecloth/etc sheet) to hold the shape of the loaves.
	I struggled and did some kinda shenanigan to shape the loaf and placed it on the couche. Then you bunch up the cloth between the loaves to form walls to hold the dough and help it rise upwards instead of outwards.
	I left them for about an hour to swell.
	After which, I dusted a cookie sheet with cornmeal (and started preparing the oven for hearth baking (tray in preheating oven, filled with boiling water when loaves are put in the oven and also spritz the oven with water a few times every half minute).
	Then move the loaves to the baking sheet. Gently. He also said something about stretching them. I didn’t to this purposely…I knew it would happen on its own on being transferred to the sheet.
	Take out the nice and golden loaves! I used my thermometer again to check if it was about 205 F.

The complete photo set is here.