So, we'll discuss the propriety of following a post about killing your co-ethnics with a trivial post on italian bread at some time in the future. For now, if you're interested in a few photos of the ciabatta process, click here. Click here for the finished product only. My apologies for the crap-tastic pictures.

Baking bread is one of the real pleasures of cooking. It's hardly an observation original to me, but the idea of combining flour and water and getting something at once so delicious and fundamental is inspirational. On top of that, I've recently had my bread baking itch re-activated by two encounters - first, by a reader who contacted me with news of their successful baguett-ery, and second, by a federalist society member with whom I spent half an hour talking ciabatta on Friday night. Armed with a quarter pound of sopresetta to eat with the end product, I settled down for some serious baking today. The results were delicious.

This ciabatta is my preferred "Italian" bread. Sure, focaccia as made around here is nice, but it also tends to be heavily oiled. Since in all cases I prefer breads that include nothing but flour, water, yeast (or other leaven) and salt, the ciabatta I discuss below is a perfect foil for my other gluttonies.

The conventional wisdom is that baking requires exact measurments. To some extent, this is right - cakes are particularly fickle things. But I'm always frustrated by recipes for bread that rely more heavily on measurments than feel - the experience of kneading bread connects you so closely to the food that "feel" is necessarily central. Who hasn't cracked a smile at that transformational moment when pizza dough, say, turns from a granular amalgamation of some disparate ingredients to a smooth, gluten rich, bread dough?

As noted by the recipe's orginator (Rose Levy Beranbaum of The Bread Bible) the overriding feel of ciabatta is wetness. Unlike that pizza dough I discuss above, it should never coalesce, but should remain wet, hardly coherent, throughout. It should always be sticky - so sticky, in fact, that kneading by hand should be minimized in favor of an oiled spatula or stand mixer. This is important, because if the dough is too dry, you'll get a dense, unappetizing loaf rather than the airy ciabatta you expect. If the proportions the recipe gives don't give you wetness, due perhaps to the humidity in your house, or the age of your flour, add a little more water. Especially with bread, reality trumps the recipe. Having said all that, a recipe is a good starting point, and I offer one here.

1. Three days before baking, prepare the biga (called a poolish when you're making french bread). For this recipe, combine .5 cup of good, unbleached, white flour (i.e, King Arthur) with .25 cups of water, some yeast, and salt. Mix well, and let rise outside for 6 hours before placing in the refrigerator to develop flavor.

2. On the day of baking, combine a scant cup of flour with a little yeast. Mix well, then add some salt (I'm told that this makes sure the salt doesn't kill the yeast). Add the biga, and half a cup of water. Mix well - as I say above, it should be quite wet. Adjust if not wet enough, and knead or mix for ten minutes until strands of gluten develop, and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Remove from bowl and place in an oiled, covered, pan to triple in size.

3. Remove risen dough from pan, shape into a sort of slipper, and dot the dough with your fingers to make a series of depressions. This will spread the dough out. Then, with the palms of your hands, push the dough back into its distinctive slipper shape - this will create the characteristic lines on the top of the dough when you invert it.

4. Invert the dough into a prepared (i.e, lightly oiled) baking tray. Cover, and let rise for two hours. Sift a very little flour onto the top. In the last half hour, pre-heat the oven at 500 F. Also, place a cast-iron or other oven safe skillet on the floor of the oven.

5. When the dough has risen to about 1.5 inches in height, pour a cup of ice into the skillet on the floor of the oven (believe it or not, my freezer doesn't work so I had to run to 7-Eleven to buy a superfluous "Gulp" filled with ice) and put the tray with the bread on a baking stone, if you have one. The ice is there to mist the oven - essential for a crisp, crunchy, crust.

6. Bake for five minutes at 500 F, and then lower to 450 F for another 15 minutes. Remove when brown (and when it sounds hollow knocked on the bottom), and let cool on a rack. Slice, and enjoy.