Ciao Time

Almost a year ago, I first made the bliss dubbed balsamic-glazed chicken and bell pepper sandwiches for a family lunch at school. Over the past year, I've made the dish countless times, although rarely have the chicken, bell peppers and onions made their way onto focaccia or any other bread. You may well know by now, Gentle Reader, that I try to avoid bread the way a recovering alcoholic tries to avoid alcohol to stay on the proverbial wagon.

But when you've had a particular dish a particular way several times, you get a little bored, or at least uninspired. Rather than serving the chicken, peppers and onions with a side of basmati or jasmine or brown rice on Sunday, I thought I'd live on the wild side: I'd attempt to make our own focaccia.

In that respect, Gentle Reader, I failed. While I did find a focaccia recipe in Anne Sheasby's The Bread Machine Bible amongst the numerous recipes that need to be baked in an oven, I didn't want to hassle with using both a bread machine and the oven. Not only was the Sunday evening rather warm and muggy as the sun shined brightly after several rain showers throughout the day, but I didn't want to hassle with letting the focaccia loaves rise before baking them.

Ruling out the focaccia recipe, I settled on another in the book, rosemary ciabatta rolls.

"Rolls?" you ask, Gentle Reader? "Have you ever made rolls in your life?"

Yes, rolls. And no, I've never made rolls in my life. And that statement still stands.

Rosemary Ciabatta Rolls1 1/2 C water
2 T olive oil
3 1/2 C white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1 t salt
1 t sugar
1 t instant dry yeast
1 T finely chopped fresh rosemary
milk for glazing

1. Pour the water into the bread pan, then add the oil.
   
2. Sprinkle the flour over the water and oil, covering the liquid completely.
   
3. Place the salt and sugar in separate corners of the pan.
   
4. Make a small indent in the middle of the flour and add the yeast.
   
5. Place the pan in the machine, close the lid, set the machine to Dough and press Start.
   
6. Meanwhile, grease or flour two cookie sheets and set aside.
   
7. When the dough is ready, remove it from the machine, punch it down on a lightly floured surface, then knead the chopped rosemary evenly into the dough.
   
8. Divide the dough into about 10 equal portions.
   
9. Roll and shape each portion into a ball or oval, then flatten them slightly.
   
10. Place the rolls on the cookie sheets, spacing them well apart.
    
11. Cover the rolls and leave them to rise in a warm place for about 30 min. or until they've doubled in size.
    
12. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
    
13. Brush the tops of the rolls with milk, then dust them with flour.
    
14. Bake the rolls about 20 min. or until they're golden brown and sound hollow when tapped underneath.
    
15. Transfer the rolls to a wire rack to cool.

Yield: About 10 good-size rolls

Nutritional Info
Like Donna Rathmell German, Sheasby doesn't include nutritional data for her recipes. Bummer.

The Faudie's Futzings
I'm sure you're asking yourself now, Gentle Reader, "Why did she choose this recipe if she didn't want to mess with using both a bread machine and an oven, which excluded the focaccia recipe?"

I chose the ciabatta because the use of fresh rosemary intrigued me and, for no reason in particular, I thought this recipe might work well done entirely in the bread machine.

And that's just what I did. Instead of selecting the Dough cycle on the Breadman Ultimate, I opted to use the Rapid French setting--again, for no particular reason except that I seemed to recall seeing a recipe for an "Italian" loaf in another machine's recipe booklet that called for using the basic French cycle. Since I'd never used any of the rapid cycles on any of the six (or is it seven?) machines we have, I thought, Hey, what the hell? Why not give it a try? It's not like this loaf has a snowball's chance in hell of turning out right.

Given that frame of mind, I suppose it was somewhat cruel to send the husband out in the rain twice to steal--er, collect rosemary from the neighbor's plant. Compounding that cruelty, I suppose, was that I didn't check out what exactly happens during the Rapid French cycle before starting it up. If I had, I'd have learned that the two kneadings take place back to back, followed by two risings that are separated by an 8-second punchdown. Since I failed to realize this fact, I therefore failed to add the rosemary at the right time.

No, I tried to haul my tired arse to the kitchen in time to dump the tablespoon of fragrant, freshly chopped rosemary during that 8-second punchdown.

And yes, Gentle Reader, you're right when you suspect that I failed miserable. All that rosemary just sat on top of the loaf.

Well, this way picking off the rosemary would be easier if the boy protested its presence.

While the rolls only needed 20 minutes or so of baking, I let my ciabatta loaf go for the full 40 minutes of baking programmed into the Rapid French cycle. And that seemed like a good enough time, for when we pulled the pan out, it looked somewhat edible.

When I sliced into the loaf after it had 20 minutes or so to cool, I was pleasantly surprised to find the loaf was pretty well baked through.

Hazaa!

The loaf was, I'll admit, a bit doughy yet in the center, but that didn't put us off from eating it. In fact, we ate the whole damn loaf for supper because it was damn tasty. The crust had the right amount of chewiness, and the flavor seemed right to me too. Next time, though, I'll make sure that rosemary gets kneaded into the mix at the right time.