Beef Tenderloin on Ciabatta Rolls

I had some thawed beef tenderloin and this big batch of bread dough in the fridge this morning just asking to be made into thinly sliced roasted beef on freshly made ciabatta rolls.

The dough is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It's the master recipe, which requires absolutely no kneading and hangs in your fridge until you are ready to pull off a grapefruit-sized chunk and make yourself some bread. In fact, it's recommended that you don't wash the bin that your bread is in when you make the next batch as it enhances the sourdough flavor. No kneading and no dishes! My kind of breadmaking.

This book came on the heels of the Mark Bittman's life-altering No Knead Bread, which I think would be a fine substitute for this bread.

This has been in the fridge for about a week now and you can see the gorgeous air bubbles forming.

In this case, I wanted to make individual ciabatta rolls. With wet hands pull off a chunk.

Form six balls and let them rest for 20 minutes.

While the dough is resting, put a cookie sheet pan in a 400 degree oven to pre-heat for 20 minutes. I'd use a pizza peel if I had one, as the book recommends. But this seems to work just fine.

Once the dough has rested, shape the balls into small rectangular-ish shapes. Again, wet hands help to manipulate the dough. A quick dusting of flour on top and they are ready to go in the oven.

After about 20 - 25 minutes in the oven, they're a perfect shade of brown and nicely crisped on top.

Now on to the tenderloin. Rinse it with water, pat dry and place in a pyrex baking dish.

Season to your liking. I used a grill seasoning, making sure to really coat the meat evenly so that each slice will have a flavorful crispy edge.

Preheat a saute pan with olive oil, until almost smoking. Carefully lay the tenderloin into the pan, making sure you lay it away from you so you don't splatter yourself with hot oil. Trust me on this one.

Rotate it until all sides are evenly browned - very browned, I suggest.

Once all sides are browned, put the tenderloin back into the oven, which you turned up to 425 when you took the bread out.

Bake until the thermometer reaches 140 for medium rare. Or, if you are in our part of the world where it's hard to break the habit of over cooking things to try to prevent Tajik Tummy, then by all means, follow me to 160.

It's true that meat continues to cook after you take it out of the oven. See? 170 a few minutes later.

While the meat is resting for at least ten minutes, move on to the sandwich. Slice open a ciabatta.

Grab your condiments of choice. Caramelized onions. Blue cheese. Spicy arugula. Had I had any of those on hand, I would have surely gone that route. However, this was the best I could do. Locally procured wasabi sauce.

Spread one side of the roll with the spicy wasabi sauce, top with thin slices of the beef and dig in.

Simplicity at its best.