I love bread. I love bread so much and so unconditionally that if bread cheated on me I would only blame myself. I’d go on a diet and buy sexy underwear and pretend I like all its favorite things so it wouldn’t leave me.
I don’t know if it’s because we’re having an early spring in Portland that I’m trying to squeeze all the comforty bread out of winter, but I’ve been a little factory lately. Mostly it’s just been a matter of throwing ingredients into the machine and lettin’ it fly, but this weekend I made a couple of breads by hand, the old-timey way, kneading and watching the clock, kneading and shaping, spraying with water and watching the oven.
I found this step-by-step from King Arthur Flour for baguette and ciabatta starters. The starters need to sit for 12-15 hours, then the actual prep/work time is around 4 hours—they’ve got directions for using a mixer/bread machine for some of the steps, but it’s still pretty time-consuming.
Was it worth it? Sure. The baguette came out crispy and chewy, with that full flavor of almost a whisper of a tang. Of course I don’t have any fancy baguette pans or a steam-injected oven, but I did spray them with water and bake them on my pizza stone (they baaaaarely fit). Next time I think I’ll try the French dough setting on the bread machine as a shortcut and see if I get the same results.
The ciabatta, as you can see by the photo, came out a little flat. Looks more like focaccia. The directions cautioned against adding too much flour so I didn’t…but probably should have. The flavor’s great, though.
And yes, most of it went straight into the freezer.
Michele, for some reason this post is stuck in my reader and every time I see those breads I swear to god I want to reach into the computer screen, they look Too Good. Take them away please or send me some!
I love bread. I want to eat the bread from the pictures – thank you for making me hungry!!!
And my mouth is watering from your post. Well written!
make some!