Tips on Making Bread

Video Transcript

"Let me give you a little introduction about bread in general. All breads contain flour, water, yeast and salt. A variation of this and method of mixing it, creates tremendous amount of difference in taste and appearance. As I was saying, just taking those ingredients, combining with different ratios and mixing it with a faster speed or a slower speed, will create totally different taste and flavor, that will just be unbelievable. How can same ingredients taste so different? For example, on a baguette, you get about 55 to 60 percent water compared to the flour. You get a very crusty bread, yet soft in the middle and has a nice flavor to it. You create a sour for it but very lightly. Then you got ciabatta. This is a flat Italian bread, that in Italian, it means slippers. That has a extremely crusty bread, still soft inside but its got a rugged look to it. This has 80 percent water in it. This, the baguette, you mix at a high speed for about 5 to 6 minutes to get that gluten. Well this one you don't mix as much and it is wet. And you really have to have a tray full of water to put the dough in it and let it be wet; otherwise, it will stick everywhere. You make a biga for this, which is like a different tempered sour for it that has to sit for 12 hours. So today we make the sour for tomorrow morning to put in the bread and make the ciabatta bread. This is authentic ciabatta bread. As a matter of fact, it formally came from the US team that went to France an competed to make the breads and they won the championship with this particular ciabatta. I kind of stole the recipe from there."