Ciabatta
- rosemary
- Sep 22
- 4 min read
"The Mother's Pride of the middle classes" - The Guardian
"a new bread posing as an old one that is new?"
Robin Stummer - The Guardian
I think this will be a quickie because there's not really that much to say, although I have wandered into a couple of unexpected places.
It began with this week's Guardian Feast newsletter from Felicity Cloake, which referenced an old 2002 Guardian article called Noshtalgia from a team of Guardian writers, who listed "the people, trends, dishes and products that shaped the nation's tastebuds" - the nation being Britain of course. Arranged in alphabetical order it amusingly discussed various things, some of which I might bring up here and there. And there was ciabatta with the rather astounding information that:
"it is as authentically rustic Italian as I am. It was invented in 1982 to take on the French baguette at its own game, and hit the big time in 1985, when it was one of a batch of 'continental'-style breads launched by M&S. Almost instantly it became the Mother's Pride of the middle classes, and remains so to this day."
M&S being Marks and Spencer's of course, and Mother's Pride being a major commercially produced sliced bread.
I'm not sure when it hit the big time here in Australia, but it was certainly pushed as Italian - probably Tuscan, rustic bread - which implies ancient doesn't it? So of course I had to investigate - and found the full story on the Fricot Local! website.
To summarise the man is Arnaldo Cavallari, whose family owned a flour mill, and who made bread and comes from Adria near Venice. He and three friends set about devising a bread to compete with French baguettes which were flooding the country as sandwich bread. After much work they came up with ciabatta - made from finely milled organic flour and lots of water - even more than the baguette:
"Our mentality was to put a lot of water in the flour and a lot of wine in ourselves. Francisco looked at the bread and it was flat, shaped like a slipper. “Ciabatta,” he cried, slurring the word." Arnaldo Cavallari
And even more surprisingly I found that Arnaldo in his younger years had been a successful rally driver for Lancia. He died in 2016, having founded an empire that supplied ciabatta to the world.
There are lots of recipes online for making your own, and Anna Berrill of The Guardian, offers advice on How do I make better ciabatta? but I gather it's a somewhat lengthy process and also that the dough is hard to handle because of its wetness, so why would you bother? You can buy it an artisan baker's near you if you are really fussy or else in your local supermarket. Which I occasionally do.
So why is it so successful? After all:
"On the face of it, this success is a little odd. Just look at the thing. For a start, it's a ridiculous shape. It's pointless slicing it as you would, say, a tin-loaf for a sandwich - a pair of the resulting bread slivers would offer little shelter for your bacon or cheddar, and most fillings would flop wildly at the fringes. Yet slicing horizontally can be a risky business, requiring advanced knife-skills to retain one's upper fingers" Robin Stummer/The Guardian
Well I think it's a snobby kind of thing - the craze for Italian bread - Tuscan was all the rage at one time was it not? Horrible bread to my mind - even in Italy. It looks great and tastes awful, because it's got no salt in it and it seems stale to me, even when it's fresh. Ciabatta does have it's uses though - mostly for over the top toasted sandwiches as in Jamie's Beautiful steak ciabatta; Georgina Hayden's Bombay chilli cheese ciabatta; Ixta Belfrage's Giant grilled cheese toastie with spicy honey butter and Daen Lia's Cheesy roasted garlic bread.
I've made Ixta Belfrage's giant cheese toastie and it was utterly delicious, and I didn't have too much problem slicing the ciabatta lengthwise. Well you needed to be careful I guess.
There are lots of other things you can do with ciabatta - apart from making yourself a sandwich or a hamburger - you can now get ciabatta rolls as well. Like this Courgette and ciabatta frittata from Ottolenghi - and all those salads that require bread croutons of bread that the salad dressing can soak into. Ditto for soups.
Am I imagining things or has ciabatta just become part of the ordinary bread scene these days rather than the super trendy bread you have to have? I don't think it's going away though - it's just part of the bread collection in every bread store. As common as sliced white.
"thin, crusty, suspiciously stackable ciabatta is, let's face it, hardly a bread at all. And that is the real secret of its success: it is the perfect bread for people who don't like bread, and an endearingly imperfect bread for those who do." Robin Stummer/The Guardian
YEARS GONE BY
June 11
2023 - An oldie, but a goodie
2021 - Pithiviers - a first recipe
2020 - Deleted
2017 - Nothing
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