Birdernaturalist: Mushroom Ciabatta

Today I had an eye exam, my first in 2 years and 9 months. They had me fill out a form with all the usual personal information, and at the end it asked what my hobbies were. As it seemed irrelevant, I didn't put baking bread. I've done a fair amount, but not in recent months, and with the recent pizza party, I'm getting back into it. Yesterday I attempted the Mushroom Ciabatta (Italian Slipper Bread), rated as "difficult" in my favorite bread book, pictured at left here.

There were two major flaws in the recipe. First, Peter doesn't mention the amount of water needed to make the right consistency of dough, though he does describe in a few words what the dough should be like in the end. In all other recipes he's quite precise. But here, it's only 2 cups, minus whatever water the dried mushrooms soak up (which will obviously be variable), plus whatever water is released by the sautéed fresh mushrooms (even more variable, depending on how big the pan is and how long your sauté the them, and he offers little help here). And even then he says you may not need to add all the water. Turns out I needed to add quite a bit more water to make the dough mixable and to get the right consistency. Second, when shaping the loaves, he says to stretch it to a rectangle 12 inches long. Can he possibly be unaware of the fact that a rectangle has two dimensions? How wide should I make them? Well, as you can see from my loaf (see the end), I made them much too wide, which limited how high the loaves would eventually rise. Now I know.

Here's the whole process.

Gather the ingredients:

The biga-style pre-ferment, which was a simple mixture of equal parts flour & water and a tiny bit of yeast that I made the day before, let rise 5 hours, and then stuck in the refrigerator overnight.

Weighing out the flour

Rehydrated dried mushrooms. The recipe calls for "6 dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms" but I used the bag of mixed wild mushrooms from Trader Joes. I think I should have used just half of a bag, but since the recipe doesn't give the weight required, I was only guessing.

Sautéed fresh mushrooms. He says to use shittake or crimini, but at Safeway I found these "baby bellas" which look the same. There's also about a teaspoon of pressed garlic in here. I probably used too big of a pan, as the released juices never did accumulate, which one is supposed to drain off and later use to add to the dough.

The ingredients are just barely mixed here.

The dough (along with rehydrated mushrooms) after about 15 minutes of strenuous mixing by hand (sure wish I had a mixer!). Ready for the first rise of 3 hours.

The dough is flattened to add the sautéed mushrooms...

...then rolled up lengthwise...

...then in the other direction to make a ball...

...then allowed to rest for 20 minutes closed up in a plastic bag.

Here's my too-wide rectangle in the final shaping of the dough. And now ready to be sealed up again for the second rise of about 3 hours.

OK, done rising, ready to bake. First spritz with water, then when shoving into the very hot oven onto the baking stone, 2 cups of hot water are poured into a pan in the bottom of the oven. This helps keep the crust moist during the first few minutes so the loaf can grow.