holey bread

It took me a long time, learning on my own, to figure out the secret of making bread filled with big holes – ciabatta types of bread. I love those, they’re all so chewy and great for dunking in olive oil. I had read this over and over, but couldn’t ever get there: the dough has to be extremely wet. I’d think NO, not that wet, surely it’s already too wet. And then I’d get a loaf with small, even ‘holes’ throughout the loaf.

Finally I found this recipe and as long as you just trust it and follow along (you can shake your head all you want and mutter under your breath that it must work for everyone else but surely their dough isn’t as runny as yours)… it’ll work. The worst part of making it is how loud the mixer is at high speed, for ~20 minutes. I have to hold onto mine to keep it from running all over the countertop – also a bit of a pain. But not really. Those are very small prices to pay for the wonder that is this bread. Here, I’ll show you how runny mine is:

i just finished beating the hell out of it for 20 minutes. it's PERFECT.

see how it pours? don't make the mistake of touching it with your hands; it's extremely sticky. use a spatula to guide the pour.

and now it looks like a puddle, doesn't it. it has to triple - ~2.5 hours. trust the dough.

A couple of hours later, the dough was bulging at the top of the bowl; I had luckily remembered to oil the plastic wrap so it didn’t get murderously stuck and thus cause me to curse. That’s never fun.

So I put a good layer of flour down on the counter, and poured the blob of dough out.

yep - that's a big blob of dough.

i used a bench scraper to cut the dough into three bits - and tossed flour all over them before patting them roughly into shape

heavily floured, I cover them with a clean cloth for the final rise, ~45 minutes. Meanwhile, the oven is cranking up to 500 degrees.

The pizza stone is on the 2nd to bottom rack so it’ll get screaming hot, too. I always place a sheet of parchment paper on the peel just to make the process a bit simpler.

A quick 18-20 minutes later? You’re dehydrated from all the drool induced by the smell of bread baking, and you have this:

captivating, crusty, golden, and holes inside.

And here it is, full o’ holes.

well now, THAT is a hole.