Rosemary Ciabatta Rolls

Somedays I just like the smell of fresh baked bread in the house. How about fresh baked bread with a hint of rosemary?

Here’s a real easy recipe for ciabatta rolls that I got from my new Panini Express cookbook written by Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman. This is a great little cookbook I picked up when I bought my panini grill last month. It has great recipes for breads, toppings and paninis.

Easy, easy, easy. (especially if you have a KitchenAid mixer!)

You just need to allow yourself time for the dough to raise properly.

Six ingredients (seven if you use the rosemary): Water, yeast, unbleached flour, sugar, olive oil, kosher salt and fresh rosemary.

Put the dough hook on your mixer and in the bowl, combine 1 tsp. yeast with 3/4 cup plus 1 tbs. tepid water (70 to 78 degrees). Add flour, sugar,  salt, and olive oil and stir with a spatula just enough to blend. With the dough hook, mix the dough on low speed (a ‘2’ on a KitchenAid) for 3 minutes.

Add around 1 tsp. of chopped fresh rosemary and kick the speed up to an 8 on your KitchenAid until it clears the sides of the bowl and collects on the hook. This will take around 8 minutes. Watch your mixer so it doesn’t “walk” off your counter.

Oil a 7 x 11 baking dish and scrape the dough into the dish. Using oiled fingers, pat it across the bottom of the dish. Cover with plastic wrap (important!) and put in a warm, draft-free place to rise until doubled in size (about 2 hours).

Now here’s the tricky part….you need to divide the dough up into lil’ ciabatta rolls…

The original recipes calls for dividing the dough up with a knife and pushing the little dough balls away from each other.  It didn’t work for me…the dough’s too sticky and the knife gets all tangled up in the stickiness.

It was ugly. I grabbed a pair of kitchen shears and cut the dough up gently into 6 pieces…

With oiled fingers, I gently coaxed it into a shape.

Set the rolls up on an oiled baking sheet. They need to be tented again with saran wrap so they get nice and warm. Place short glasses on the four corners of the baking sheet to tent the saran wrap.

Don’t stress over this…it’s not that difficult. You need the saran wrap to protect your little dough boys and keep them warm and moist.

Let sit for another 40 minutes until they rise 50% of their size.

Bake ‘em in a 475 degree oven for 20 minutes until golden brown. Brush hot rolls with olive oil. Put your nose over them smell the yeast and rosemary….

and say “why didn’t I think of this sooner?”

You can thank me later!

Here’s the printable recipe!