Stone Bread Shaping and Proofing

Officially, proofing is defined as the rising that happens after you have shaped your dough into its final loaf form. But given that we have blurred the lines between the second primary fermentation and proofing with some innovative, and flexible, degassing methods, you have a couple more options at this point.

Let’s start with the fully degassed, out of the bread machine dough, where your dough ferments on a counter or pizza peel.

Primary Fermentation on the Counter

After 90 minutes to 2 hours, the dough will have expanded to double. Take a wet bread scraper, and cut the dough in half. Gently, stretch the dough, and then fold it in thirds — one-third over the middle, and the second third over that (like folding a letter before you put in an envelope). When you do the last fold (the top third back over the rest of the dough), stretch it a little, so that you get a tight skin over the loaf. The skin gives the crust its texture and gives the loaf some structure for its final rising. Repeat on the second loaf.

You can either put the loaves on your pizza peel or on the back of a cookie sheet, with enough flour so they will slide. Spray with oil, cover with a towel, and let them rise again for 45 minutes to an hour. You are ready for baking.

I think this method gives the bread the most air holes, the nicest and most delicate crust, but it clearly the most labor-intensive.

Primary Fermentation in the Bread Machine

If you did your second fermentation in the bread machine, gently pour and pull to dough out, being careful to not lose your gas bubbles. Cut the dough into two pieces, and gently pull and fold each into the one-third letter shapes described above. Let it rise in place for up to an hour.

If you took one of the alternative second fermentation methods, here is how to proceed.

Your goal is to get your dough into shape as gently as possible, as early in the evening as possible. Time is good for bread, and your bread will enjoy its time in loaf shape before you put it in the oven.

Think of it this way. You would like 30 minutes at the end for your bread to cool, about 40 minutes in the oven, and about 45 minutes of proofing. In a perfect world, you would be able to start this process about 2 hours before you want to enjoy the fruits of your labors. But, of course, it doesn’t work that way. As you time window goes down, start taking the time first out of cooling time which is to say only cool the bread for 15 minutes, but give it more time to proof. As you get to crunch time I need this bread in 45 minutes, shape your loaves, give them a couple of minutes to collect themselves, and throw them in the oven.

Even if you shortcut the process, you will be amazed at how nice your bread looks, smell, tastes, and feels. Plus, and you eat your dinner and warm bread, you loaves will improve and they cool, and the crumb finishes cooking. Warm bread is a constant topic of dinner conversation at our home.

One more word on handling the dough. Treat your dough gently. Only touch it when you have to, and handling it gently when degassing, moving and shaping. Not only will rough handling squash your beautiful air bubbles in the crumb, it will also produce a tough, dense crust and crumb that is hard to eat and unappealing.

This is doubly true when you are taking some shortcuts in the process. Dough that has been over-handled has time to get over it and become light again with longer and multiple risings. But a dough that goes quickly from degassing to shaping, proofing, and the oven doesn’t have a lot of time and needs a little special attention.

Luckily, that can all be handled with a little practice, and a little trial-and-error and it does not require any additional time on your part.

As a whole, I think you can weave bread making into your daily routines to where you hardly know it’s there other than the pleasure you get from doing something that is fun and fulfilling, and from knowing that you are creating a wonderful addition to the upcoming evening. At it’s most simple, creating an excellent pizza stone Ciabatta can be done in less than 10 minutes of preparation time per day. I can think a very few endeavors that give such a great return for such a small investment.

You are ready to Bake your bread on your Pizza Stone.