Basil ciabatta

I baked ciabatta, as it's one of my favourite bread types. I got inspiration and guidance from this recipe (in Finnish only), but then put my own twist on it. The original recipe used herb cream, but I thought that fresh herbs would be nicer and chose basil as the herb, as I wanted to serve the bread with tomato and mozzarella.

These ingredient amounts make either one large ciabatta or two smaller ones. Even 4-6 ciabatta rolls are possible, depending on the size.

28 g fresh basil leaves

250 ml cream

450 ml white bread flour

2 tbsp dry yeast

½ tbsp sugar

½ tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

Chop the basil leaves finely and warm the cream lukewarm. Add the basil to the cream and let infuse for a couple of minutes.

Mix the dry ingredients. Then add the basil cream and olive oil and knead to a bread dough.

Let the dough rise under a teatowel in a warm place for about one hour.

Shape to breads, brush them with olive oil and let rest under a teatowel for a further 15 minutes.

Bake at 220C for about 20 minutes until the surface is crispy and golden brown and the breads are fully baked.

After a while of cooling, I served the ciabatta with striking green tiger tomatoes, torn mozzarella and basil.

Your VegHog