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Re: Ciabatta

yguaba@yahoo.com.br
Sun, 13 May 2007 19:09:22 -0300
v107.n017.8
Hi Doug,

On 06 May 2007 at 18:33, Doug Essinger-Hileman wrote:
>My questions are two: Glezer introduces this formula with, "This is 
>a large, dramatic bread full of huge holes and beautifully striped 
>with flour." Can I assume that she means that the outside is striped 
>with flour? Secondly, the instructions suggest "using plenty of 
>flour for dusting [the dough during turning] 3 or 4 times." I forgot 
>to dust at all during the dusting. I assume that this led to the 
>dough remaining fairly wet, which obviously worked out well. Would 
>someone like to surmise what effects would result from actually 
>using the flour to dust during turning?

With wet doughs such as ciabatta, you need to dust both the work 
surface and the dough with plenty of flour simply because if you 
don't, the dough will stick to everything. The dusting isn't designed 
to give the bread flavour, but merely to make it possible to handle 
the dough. Now, if you somehow managed to turn and fold the dough 
during bulk fermentation without lots of flour on the counter and on 
the dough itself, no problem. In fact, you should let us know how you 
did it! :-

As for the stripes, I don't really know what Glezer is talking about. 
Baked ciabatta loaves usually have some of the flour used during 
folding and shaping on the outside because you need to use so much 
that it isn't all absorbed by the dough. But the effect is usually 
rather random, not in stripes or anything.

I'm interested in how you achieved big irregular holes in the crumb. 
I haven't had much luck with holes in my bread, even with long 
fermentation times. Perhaps it's because of the less-than-ideal flour 
available where I'm living, which I think doesn't have as much gluten 
as it should have (impossible to tell exactly how much gluten the 
flour contains, though).

Cheers,

Erik