Inventing the Universe: BLT Challenge

Since I made my bacon with a pancetta cure, I decided to give my BLT an Italian motif. The first bread I chose to make was Craig Ponsford’s ciabatta from Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer. I had recently purchased the book and wanted to try the technique. It wasn’t until I searched on the internet for help after my seeming disaster (which I’ll show you a bit later), that I found out that it is many baker’s favorite ciabatta recipe.

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The day before you are ready to mix the final dough, you make the biga (pre-ferment of flour, water, and yeast) and let it ferment for 24 hours.

This biga is made from unbleached bread, unbleached all-purpose, whole-wheat, and whole-rye flours with water and a tiny bit of yeast.

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Here’s the dough fermenting under plastic wrap.

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During the beginning of fermentation, the dough is turned every 20 minutes. By this point at the end of fermentation it should be a bit stiffer. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm came up in the middle of the fermentation and I didn’t feel confident enough to add much flour at this point.

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I was afraid to proof the loaves in a couche or tea towel, no matter how heavily floured; so I used floured plastic wrap. I had read when forming ciabatta not to make it less that 3/4” thick or it might puff like a pita. This dough was so very slack, I didn’t flatten it at all. It flowed to this form. Ah well, I’d gone this far; might as well bake it.

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There was no chance the gloppy loaves would slide off a peel. I used a wide spatula and hope to flip them onto parchment paper. I was feeling a bit better…this didn’t look so bad.

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