Il Forno

Nancy Silverton's rustic bread and breaking my head on ciabatta

A few weeks ago I baked for the first time bread from Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery. I chose probably the least time consuming and easiest of the lot two start, the rustic bread, her own version of the Italian ciabatta (slipper in Italian, because of its shape). I intended to write about this bread at the time but my blog posting backlog (still growing) delayed at least in part this entry. What played an even further role was trying to understand what a ciabatta is and where it really comes from. The bread I baked, although delicious, had nothing to do with the ciabattas you get in Italy and this is not the first time I notice this. Recipes from other US, UK and German baking books I tried before gave varying results, some to die for other to kill (the book's author) for, but never anything like what I was used to. So why is this bread so popular (there's even a nice German blog called Chili und Ciabatta) if we're actually talking about completely different breads?

Trivial pic of the day

Wondering what the above pic is? Some deep sea water vent? The first image finally transmitted from the presumed forever lost Beagle 2?

Crispy sourdough waffles.

Over the week-end I’ve been finally baking with my revived sourdough starter again. I’ll keep my first attempt for tomorrow, since I need to check a few details. So today, as a starter, if you want, I’ll introduce a “side-product” of sourdough baking. One of the disturbing aspects of keeping a starter is, for me, the constant removal of a part of it: each day a share of your starter, if unused, ends up in the toilet. What, first I have to grow it as if it were my own son, and then I have to dump it? Are you kidding? Problem is, if you don’t and if you don’t bake every single day, you’ll end up with a gigantic amount of starter taking up all your space. Just imagine going to your landlord and telling him you’ve sub-leased his flat to two hundred cubic meters of starter! Consequently, throwing away part of my starter every day is the only solution. I do keep my eyes closed when I flush it though.

Starter reanimation

After a few months I decided it's time to bake sourdough bread again. Reading Deb's nice comments on Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery, I finally decided to get hold of the book. I might try to get a starter, according to her method, sometime in the future, but getting my own going again seems easier and less time consuming. If it works. My self-made starter remained, till yesterday, stored as a dry sheet. I had read this starter-storing tip, on eGullet I believe, a while back and it made sense to me then. After all yeast and bacteria build spores which can survive for years. I wasn't that sure yesterday; as I mixed my crumbled dried starter with water visions of dead yeast and bacteria cells was all that came to mind. Will they start producing CO2 happily again? Did I have starter-related nightmares tonight? Well, no, but the first thing I did waking up was checking the starter. It bubbles!

Pizza!

Last Saturday I started preparing a new sourdough batch. It is almost becoming a tradition. But then all of a sudden I found myself thinking about pizza. After all don't some of the best pizzerias in Naples still use sourdough? Then why not give it a try?
I've been trying quite a few pizza crust recipes in the last year or so and I'm still not completely satisfied. Maybe I should first explain what I'm looking for. Having lived quite a few years in Naples I have become partial to the kind of crust that's typical of the city pizzerias; thin, bubbly and soft. You could easily take a pizza and fold two times, actually the traditional way to eat pizza on the go. I don't like what I would call Roman style crust, i.e. thin and cracker crisp. I'm OK with pan pizza although my Italian pride still has to come to terms with calling that pizza :-))). Baking Neapolitan crust at home is actually impossible if you don't have a wood burning brick oven. You need the high temperatures for proper baking and the wood for the wonderful smoky flavour. Still a pale copy would be enough for me.

Sourdough 2.0: the exploding bread

This week-end I tried baking sourdough bread again. This time the results were much better (see my first try) but still not perfect. Instead of having a flat bread I had a slight exploding bread problem. By that I mean that my bread expanded a bit too much in the oven, so much actually that the crust popped open in one place. I found out that probably my first bread was way over-proofed and for that reason so flat. I also changed the method this time and used the one explained by jackal10 in the eGullet culinary institute.

Sourdough 1.0

Things had gone fine till now, so probably I should not be surprised to see that luck (or chance if you wish) has asked for her due back. My first attempt at sourdough bread from scratch was not a complete success. Ok it was not a failure either but a few things could have definitely been better. The main reason for the "problems" was mainly my lack of attention in a crucial point of the recipe. From this follows: if you've been out eating and drinking (quite a bit) with friends and want to shape your bread (or similar) always check everything one extra time... and then once again.

It's rising...

Oh my I have a baby !! OK maybe my enthusiasm is a bit exaggerated, I still have to bake with the "creature", but my "chef" is showing definite signs of wild yeast life. After the first day the little ball of dough had just dried out. Another 24 hours later and the hard dry skin had, as you can see from the pic, started to crack.

The "chef": a beginning

I've tried baking bread with sourdough starters before, but never to get one from scratch myself. I've been waiting for a chance to try for quite a while and no occasion would be more propitious than the start of a new blog. Sure, if it doesn't work, it wont make a too good impression but what would be life without risks.

Before starting I leafed through my bread books to get some background info. There seem to be many variations which can all be divided in two groups: soft/wet starters, with quite a high water/flour ratio and dry ones, i.e. French style. I picked the French method mainly because I found the description (from Joe Ortiz's "The Village Baker") clear and more detailed than those in my other books.