Paul's Ciabatta Breadsticks (GBBO Technical #3)

 

Well, friends, these breadsticks were a whole ordeal. I was skeptical of them when we watched the episode, since none of us are big on olives in this house. However, having already determined to bake them all and having had other ingredients redeemed by GBBO bakes in the past, I was ready to to try my hand at these olive, manchego, onion, cilantro stuffed ciabatta breadsticks. 

The recipe begins simply enough with flour, salt, yeast, and water mixed into a dough. That's where the simplicity ends. 

The dough was SO wet. I know ciabatta dough is supposed to be wet and hard to work with, but my goodness. I went back and forth on whether or not to add more flour, and decided against it since the contestants all said it was a very wet dough, but I honestly don't know that that was the right decision. I ran the machine for a long time to knead it until it was stretchy, but whatever I did, it somehow wasn't the correct option. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Next up was prepping all the fillings and adding them to the dough. Let's just say Paul Hollywood is not stingy on the fillings.

Once mixed, the dough is tipped into an oiled square container and left to rise until doubled.

Look at how goupy that is.

You can see the yeast at least is active. It rose well, and I headed over to church to bake and shape them since the oven at home was being used for supper. (Now is the time I may as well mention that this was the day we were loading the truck with all of our stuff to move into the new house, and there was just a LOT going on. I didn't have a time limit, but the contestants had fewer distractions, I think). 

HOW

does ANYONE

SHAPE 

these DISASTERS?

Guys, please just picture this. The other adults in the family are over at the storage unit loading up the truck. Mom has lasagna in the oven for supper, which these are supposed to accompany, so I'm over at church with my mess of a bread dough attempting to shape it. The girls are unsupervised and getting into all sorts of mischief in the kitchen. My hands are completely covered in this horribly sticky, glue-like dough that absolutely will not be shaped into anything. I just had to kind of cut it into strips and then somehow move them over to a baking tray without them falling apart in my hands. I'm running out of time to get them done before supper, and every minute it takes me to work with them is a minute more that the girls can use to get into mischief. I may even have been close to tears at the stress levels. I guess it would make for good TV?

When finally baked, they looked like this. Paul Hollywood would put these directly into the trash can.

Let's all laugh together.

They tasted fine. Not good enough to redeem themselves, but I ate two of them. They were not nearly as good the next day, and I think we ended up throwing some of them out. Suffice it to say, I am never making these again.