I have never tried to bake ciabatta before but encouraged by this community bake I thought I would spend a morning on YouTube to watch a bundle of videos on the subject to see how it is done. I eventually settled on John Kirkwood's Sourdough Ciabatta Bread largely because it uses a sourdough poolish which I have often used before.
I was poking around in the back of the drinks cupboard, as you do, and came across this bottle of Saltaire Triple Chocoholic stout, a long forgotten thoughtful gift from Jane, my daughter,
It seemed a pity to drink it all at once when I could enjoy it for a lot longer, one slice at a time, so it became the large part of the liquid in a pair of loaves of 40% wholewheat bread.
Here's the breakdown:
San Francisco Sourdough has always been a sort of holy grail for me, based entirely on its reputation. I have only previously tasted my own few attempts to bake it, drawn from the many SFSD recipes available online and in books and I have judged the results to have varied between "OK" and "not too bad", so I was delighted to see David Snyder's blog entry on 7th March 2019 and his SFSD formula which is fairly closely derived from that of the original bakers. I had to try it.
I have a nostalgic childhood memory of a black or near black bread that used to appear on the table at family get togethers in the East End of London just before and after the war. Once in a while that memory returns strongly enough to encourage me to start yet another futile unsuccessful search to discover what this exotic bread was…….. futile that is until last month when I came across This video on YouTube under the name rus brot.
A long time ago, before I had ever baked so much as a crumb I had a sudden urge to make a loaf of bread, so equipped with the unshakeable confidence of the totally inexperienced, I bought a pack of whole-wheat flour. I read the instructions on the paper bag and followed them meticulously and baked a .................brick!
