Good morning, Steemit! Today I took the morning off from work because I made a bad choice and tried to get out of my garage without snow tires and ended up taking out my side-view mirror. In the face of tragedy, I'm going to turn this event into something positive and talk to you about my fondness for bread.
Not this Bread
Back when I was a lad my stepfather would bake loaves of bread around Christmas time and deliver them to all his friends and family. I would spend most of my time in the kitchen watching him do it as I did my homework on the bar stool. It was always a mesmerizing process, much of which I had very little understanding of why or how you did the things you had to do in order to make bread. Yeast seemed like magic, and kneading seemed more like a fun activity for strong people. These days I bake bread for either fun or charity, often both.
A good loaf that got me a date
This time I tried to make come ciabatta bread. I tried to do it once before, and although delicious it was not technically a ciabatta, just a moist loaf. This time I wanted to do it right, so I set aside a couple of hours to do some baking with 
To start the process I have to weigh all of my ingredients. First is the flour, yeast, and salt. These make up 75% of the ingredients used in most breads.
Be careful not to let the salt and yeast touch each other before you start mixing. Salt controls the growth. If they touch too soon you'll kill off your leavening agent.
Next is the liquid. We've got some water here, and after we add a little bit of oil once the dough starts coming together.
Ciabatta isn't so much a dough as it is more of a batter. It's very very loose and besides the five minutes of mixing, there isn't any kneading to be done.
After everything has mixed, the dough is smooth, and the gluten has developed sufficiently, it's time for the first fermentation. For your run of the mill bread you would do this in just a greased bowl with a moist tea towel over it, but here we're putting it in some more oil to rise. The oil is so the dough can rise and keep its shape when we pour it back onto the work surface. Plus I think it makes it more ciabatta-y.
INTERMISSION
THANK YOU
The bread took about three hours to rise. This was the result:
Impressive, no?
It doesn't look like much but it's gone through a metamorphosis of sorts. It's much smoother and elastic now. Every individual bubble of gas that grew larger helped develop the gluten strands to turn it into something very delicious. After shaping it into something that looks like a loaf and an hour of proofing, I threw it in the oven. Your oven needs to be preheated to pretty fucking hot, almost as hot as the oven will go. You'll also need a baking pan full of water to generate steam, and a baking stone. Don't actually buy a baking stone from a cookware store. Just go to your local hardware store and get yourself a tile or two of unglazed stone tile. They will look at you weird if you only ask for two but it's well worth it.
Thanks Google
After baking the bread came out OK. It was a little more flat than I would have liked, but I think that's because I used my hands to mix instead of a stand mixer. If anybody wants to give me theirs, that would be great. The bread itself tastes great, and it has a pretty decent crumb:
All in all a good experience, and I can't wait for my next opportunity to try a new kind of bread.
