Ciabatta - the easy way

I blagged this recipe for ciabatta from a Lindsey Bareham cookbook 'A Celebration of Soup', first published in 1993. It as no kneading as such, but you do need (sic) a food processor. Mine is a relatively ancient one that has no dough hook as such, just one of those whizzy double-bladed things across the bottom. Worked well, though.

The longer you allow the first fermentation, the better the flavour, they say. Mine was left 3 and a half hours, and I needed some bread for the evening, so that's when the first fermentation had to stop. It has been suggested that you can leave it for up to 24 hours!

Ingredients and recipe........

So, the recipe (for a fairly flat 7-inch - 18cm loaf).

Ingredients:

1 level teaspoon dried yeast
225g unbleached white bread flour
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
pinch salt
200-240ml hand-warm water

Method:

Fit the 'dough' blade to the food processor. Briefly blend together the dried yeast and the flour. Add salt, olive oil and start the processor again. Gently run in (through the funnel) as much of the water as is needed to form a stiff batter - note that I said batter, not dough. You couldn't take the batter out and knead it, it will be too soft for that. Bear this in mind while adding the water. I stopped at just 200ml, which seemed to be right, but your mileage may vary, as they say.

Continue running the processor for a couple of minutes, then scrape down and batter from the sides, put the lid on, insert the funnel or whatever is used as a spout to keep it sort of airtight, and leave for a minimum of 3-6 hours. A good idea is to stick a piece of sticky tape or a plaster on the side, so that you can mark the level at which it starts. Mine was left, as I said, for 3 and a half hours, by which time it had trebled in size - not the usual double for bread dough.

Scrape the dough as gently as possible into a nonstick shallow pan (I actually used a square one, which was all I had available), and leave in a warm spot for 30-40 minutes, covered with a teatowel. It will probably double in size. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to Gas Mark 7 (425F/220C) and bake for 30-40 minutes in the middle of the oven. I covered the pan with foil for the last ten minutes, as it seemed to be brown enough. And brushed a little olive oil over the top 5 minutes before the end. This latter is probably unnecessary, as there is plenty of oil in the bread itself.

You can see the result in the pictures - it was very light, very tasty, and didn't last the night between two of us! Well, we were having soup.

Note: Next time I do this, I think I'll mix a little of the warm water with the yeast and leave for 10 minutes before adding it to the flour; it will probably give a better distribution of the yeast within the batter.