Whole Foods Organic Ciabatta Bread Review

Have you ever wondered what Ciabatta bread is? Well, if you want to find out by tasting it, look no further than Whole Foods Organic Ciabatta Bread. Much like the Ciabatta bread made in the beautiful Lake Como region of Italy, Whole Foods Ciabatta Bread has quite a crisp crust, a somewhat soft, porous texture, and has an elongated shape that makes it great for use as a sandwich loaf.

But don't mistake the description of it as an elongated loaf, and great for sandwiches, to mean that it's like the pan loaf shaped sliced bread commonly found on every grocery store's bread aisle; the profile, or height of Ciabatta bread is much lower, and if the baker gets it right, the middle of the loaf is somewhat collapsed in the middle. This goes back to what the Italian word ciabatta means: carpet slipper. Hence the middle of the bread would be where you put your foot into the slipper.

As alluded to above, ciabatta originally is an Italian bread. The way Whole Foods makes it holds fairly close to how it's still made in Italy. Of course, it is Americanized to a degree. Here's the short list of ingredients. And they're short because that's just what ciabatta bread is all about: a simply made bread, essentially made from a poolish, perhaps on the fly. Though a real baker could tell you a lot more about his or her pre-ferment, starter, or poolish, plenty more than I could in this lifetime.

Ingredients: Organic white bread flour, poolish (organic unbleached unbromated wheat flour, filtered water, yeast), filtered water, sea salt, yeast.

Whole Foods sells its fresh baked, hand shaped, Organic Ciabatta Bread for about three dollars a pound. A real bargain, and one of the reasons I buy it every once-in-a-while. In fact, while I very much like the taste, this one particular bread I may factor in the great price a bit more than what I would usually when deciding together on the tastes of breads and their prices.

The slipper-like loaf used for this review cost me two dollars and twenty-nine cents before tax. And true to its nature, we used it mainly for small, quick sandwiches; except for my little toddler being the bread lover she's become, any bread she can get her hands on she gnaws.

If you're into making sandwiches, give Whole Foods Organic Ciabatta Bread a try. It's inexpensive, great for making little sandwiches, and tastes great.