King of the Table- Ciabatta Rustica

“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.”

-Louis Bromfield, American novelist (1896-1956)

When I decided to start a blog, and to focus it mainly on the subject of food, I was left with the question that haunts every writer staring at a blank page: where to begin? I thought about some sort of extravagant dessert- I am, after all, something of a pastry chef by trade (more on that later)- but decided that might be a bit like showing off, and not terribly useful for the average person. A meat dish, maybe? But I intend to have plenty of vegetarian dishes represented here as well, so that seemed off-putting. It was, in fact, when I was working in the kitchen on something I do several times a week that the answer occurred to me.

Bread and I have a long and sometimes mildly abusive relationship. I eat it like it's going out of style. I am of the serious opinion that nothing short of the threat of death could convince me to go gluten-free (although you will find gluten-free recipes here), because there is nothing more wonderful to me than the crackle of chestnut-colored crust and the chewy, clingy feeling of biting into a slice still warm in the middle. And is there anything more comforting than the scent of baking bread? Even the beery smell of a bowl of dough can make me weak in the knees.

Let me be clear here: I ain't talking Wonderbread. Sunbeam does not enter this hallowed kitchen. Mrs. Baird will never darken my doorstep. What gets my motor running is fresh-baked artisanal loaves with a crisp crust and a dense crumb. I am talking about bread that will forever change your definition of the word "sandwich," not to mention the word "toast."

After that epiphany, of course, I had to decide which recipe to share with you. I have a whole wheat sourdough loaf that's my all-purpose, three-times-a-week loaf, but that seemed a little dull for the opening post of my blog. While pondering that, I received a Merry Christmas to me gift in the mail- a parcel of books, one of which is Jim Lahey's marvelous book My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method. This is a book I've been craving for a long time- after all, my daily bread recipe is based on one of Mr. Lahey's. And let me tell you, it was worth every cent.

I ripped open the book like a five year old cracked out on Christmas candy and dove straight in. The first recipe I tried was, of course, for ciabatta, the chewy Italian king of sandwich breads that is equally good eaten solely with olive oil. It was a revelation- fully as good as any ciabatta I've had in a bakery. A crisp, light crust, a chewy center, substantial and light all at once, ciabatta is one of the most satisfying breads you can eat. I'd never had luck making it at home. Now, I had it nailed.

Being me, though, I couldn't leave well enough alone. For one thing, I try to avoid eating bread made with purely white flour, at least on a day to day basis. For another, I am an abiding aficionado of using wild yeast, or sourdough starter, rather than packaged yeast. It adds a depth of flavor that makes the bread an experience in itself. So while I love Jim Lahey's recipe for ciabatta, I just had to tinker, and the result is below: a partly whole wheat, sourdough ciabatta, with a nuttier flavor than the all-white bread and a bit of a yeasty tang brought on by the sourdough. Feel free to fiddle with the percentage of whole wheat flour to bread flour, but keep in mind that the more whole wheat flour a bread contains, the heavier it is likely to be.

As the title of Mr. Lahey's book suggests, his method of bread-making is very, very low fuss. First you mix your bread dough, and then you cover it and let it sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours. Then you turn it out, fold it a few times, and allow it to proof for about an hour before baking it in a hot, covered container. That's it! No kneading, no complication. Time develops the gluten for you. While I actually love to knead bread, this is wonderfully time saving and makes it entirely possible to bake all of your own bread without resorting to bread machines, which in my experience make breads that taste remarkably like wallpaper paste. It's an especially good method for sourdoughs, as time increases the complexity of the flavors.

To make this recipe as written, you'll need a clay pot- I use a Romertopf clay baker, which is unglazed clay that's soaked before being placed in a cold oven. While you can probably get away with using a dutch oven or other heavy pot instead, you will definitely need a pizza stone. I've seen them for sale as cheaply as $10, and it's a must-have for every kitchen, so get one!

As a final note, I recommend you use weight rather than volume as a method of measuring when baking, but have included both methods. If you're using volume, use a spoon to stir up your flour first, then spoon it into your measuring cups and use a knife to level off the top.

Ciabatta Rustica

makes two small loaves

-300 grams (2 1/4 cup) bread flour

-100 grams (3/4 cup) whole wheat flour

-150 grams (1/2 cup) sourdough starter

If you can't get your hands on some starter,

use 1/2 tsp active dry or instant yeast

-1 3/4 cup cool water

-2 tsp sea salt

If using table salt, decrease to 1 1/2 tsp

The day before you want the bread (I usually make up the dough in the evening and bake the following morning), put together the dough. Put flours and salt into a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine- it's just as effective as sifting, in most cases, and a lot easier and faster. Add the starter and the water and mix into a dough. It doesn't have to be perfect- rough and a little shaggy is fine, as long as all the flour is at least damp. It will be significantly wetter than traditional bread dough. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm, draft-free spot for 12 to 18 hours. When it's ready it will have a wet and bubbly surface, starting to darken around the edges.

Prepare a counter or board with a dusting of flour. If you're using a Romertopf baker, now is a good time to start to soak the bottom (just the bottom- it's all you'll be using) in your sink, and you can also go ahead and put your pizza stone in the oven, on a rack in the middle. And if you're me, set up a fan under your overprotective smoke detector, or you're going to get a noise-induced headache before this is over!

Using floured hands, turn out the dough onto your prepared surface. Fold it two or three times,

then place it seam-down on the board and pat it into a long rectangular shape. Dust generously with flour and cover it with a tea towel or a floursack towel- not a terrycloth one, note, or you'll still be picking it out of the dough tomorrow. Allow to proof for 1 1/2 hours.

In the meantime, you can deal with the oven. There are two difficulties to getting bakery-quality bread at home: one is a blisteringly hot oven, and the other is humidity. Mr. Lahey's method takes care of both by essentially creating an oven within an oven- either in a pot, or, as in this bread, by using the bottom of a clay baker on top of a pizza stone. The interior of this inner oven is even hotter than the oven around it, and the humidity from the dough and the soaked clay baker is kept contained, replacing the timed blasts of steam in a commercial bread oven.

Set the soaked clay pot on top of the pizza stone, as shown, and place both of them in the oven after the bread has been proofing for approximately 1/2 hour, or about an hour before you need to begin to bake it. This will insure that the temperature inside your inner oven will be as hot as possible, which trust me, you want. Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. It should finish preheating a half hour or so before you need it, which is perfect.

At the end of the proofing period, use a pastry knife/bench scraper to divide the dough in half. You'll be baking two loaves in two shifts. Spread a couple of towels out on a heat-resistant surface (I use my stovetop, but a cutting board or a couple of trivets would be fine) and take the hot pizza stone and baker out of the oven, placing them on top of the towel layers. This is both to protect the surface and to protect the ceramic items, as a sudden change in temperature can shatter your clay baker. Remove the baker and lift half the dough- gently shape the rectangle into a longer one, almost as long as the clay pot, and place it on the pizza stone. You can use your pastry knife to help shape it once it's on the stone. Then place the baker over top of the bread like a lid and slide the whole arrangement back into the oven.

Bake with the "lid" in place for 20 minutes. Then remove the baker, and place it on an oven rack to keep it hot for the second loaf. Bake for a further ten minutes, then remove the loaf from the pizza stone and set it on a wire rack to cool. Repeat the process with your second loaf. Now comes the most important part: admiring what you've accomplished.

I know. I know it's tempting to cut right into one of those loaves and eat it. But trust me- wait. The bread won't truly finish baking until it's cooled, because heat is still doing things inside the crust well after it's removed from the oven. Listen- you hear that snap, crackle, and pop? That's the "singing" of the bread as moisture leaves the crust. Just pull up a chair and enjoy the music. At the end, you'll have your bread and eat it, too.

Eat with soup, as a fabulous sandwich, or just alone with olive oil. Any way you slice it, ciabatta is great.