An old west coast friend emailed me 2 days ago. Her significant other was trying, without a lot of success, to make focaccia. Did I have a recipe? My last focaccia foray was probably in 2003 when I was a rank amateur home baker for a short time and initially experimenting with Mr. Reinhart's BBA but years prior to the existence of TFL.
Earlier this week Abe sent to me a link of the just published Cinnamon Raisin Sour Dough on Maurizio Leo’s The Perfect Loaf. In a move of unusual rapidity for me, I built a BBGA spreadsheet entry for the bread and concurrently fed my levain in preparation.
As is often the case in the alfanso household, I went rebel and turned his posted tapered batards into baguettes. How unusual for me! But I wasn’t finished there and made some changes to the whole process. As follows:
A few months ago I posted my version of Abel Sierra’s Tritordeum baguettes, a result of which is posted in the lead photo.
That's the saying. But I was already home and wanted to go big anyway.
My wife was off to an early morning flight to Tobago for a Pan-Am Dragon Boating competition. She asked if I'd bake a WW fig-raisin-pecan levain bread as some boarding gate breakfast for the troops traveling together. Made two, sliced 'em, and packed them off with some butter and cream cheese. These are designed to bake dark and craggy, the left with traditional baguette scoring, the right with a criss-cross design.
In December 2018 I tried to duplicate the delicious breadsticks we had at one of the Arizmendi bakeries in S.F. I think that I came close after a few tries, eventual swapping out the somewhat invisible-tasting sharp cheddar and jalapeño for pecorino cheese and serrano chilies. Converted in this iteration from sponge to a 100% hydr. levain with 20% preferment AP flour, it is a 50/50 semolina/AP dough at 69% hydration.
Last time I made the Scott MeGee Ciabatta, but with a biga. Today, I converted it to a 125% hydration AP levain. Whereas the biga had 40% of the flour pre-fermented, I dropped this down to 20%, and also dropped the IDY by at least 2/3. The overall hydration stays at 76%.
I kept the large bread at 750g but decided to not stretch it so far this time so it has more girth, which I like. The taste is sweet and delicate and this ciabatta makes great morning toast.
This is a 76% hydration ciabatta modeled on that of Scott McGee. Unusual in the low hydration and that he shapes these.
Dinner the other evening with friends for “Sunday macaroni and gravy”, which may be an Americanism for pasta with tomato sauce. Also includes sausages, meatballs and ribs, all cooked in the “gravy”. I hadn’t made a ciabatta in a while, so it was off to the races as part of our contribution to dinner.
