Our latest Community Bake (CB) featured Baguettes and was a hit. Those that actively participated learned to bake baguettes of Artisan Quality. It seems the natural progression from there would be Ciabatta, the Italians answer to the French Baguette.
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia -
"Ciabatta was first produced in 1982 by Arnaldo Cavallari, who called the bread ciabatta polesana after Polesine, the area he lived in. The recipe was subsequently licensed by Cavallari's company, Molini Adriesi, to bakers in 11 countries by 1999. Cavallari and other bakers in Italy were concerned by the popularity of sandwiches made from baguettes imported from France, which were endangering their businesses, and so set about trying to create an Italian alternative with which to make sandwiches. The recipe for ciabatta came about after several weeks trying variations of traditional bread recipes and consists of a soft, wet dough made with high gluten flour."
IAll bakers of every skill level are invited to participate. Novice bakers are especially welcomed and plenty of assistance will be available for the asking. The Community Bakes are non-competitive events that are designed around the idea of sharing kitchens with like minded bakers around the world, "cyber style". To participate, simply photograph and document your Ciabatta bakes. You are free to use any formula and process you wish. Commercial Yeast, sourdough, or a combination of both are completely acceptable. Once the participants gets active, many bakers will post their formulas and methods. There will be many variations to choose from.
Here is a list of our past CBs. They remain active and are monitored by numerous users that are ready, willing, and able to help if assistance is needed. A quick browse of past CBs will provide an accurate picture of what these events are all about.
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SOMETHING NEW - Since many of the CBs grow quite large, it can become difficult to follow the progress of each individual baker. Things get very spread out. In an attempt to alleviate congestion and consolidate individual baker’s bread post, the following is suggested.
- Post all bakes in the CB
- Copy and paste each bake into a dedicated BLOG post
- Paste all bakes into a single BLOG
- You may copy and paste the link to your BLOG post in the individual bake post as a reference for those that want to view your progess and evolution.
All participating bakers that consolidate their bakes the a BLO.g post will be linked in the original post for all to see.
Links to baker’s BLOGs that have posted a compiled list of bakes for this CB
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If you haven't eaten Ciabatta, you are in for a major surprise. The flavor, texture, and ultra thin crust make any sandwich special. Please join us and post your good, bad, and ugly bakes. Many old timers are probably tired of reading this (It is a personal mantra of mine), BUT... "we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes".
The following formula and process comes from Jeffrey Hamelman's book, " Bread - a baker's book of techniques and recipes". It is also available in Kindle version on Amazon.
NOTE - since the Total Dough Weight in the spreadsheet below was scaled to 1000 grams you can easily change the dough weight by multiplying each ingredient.
For example you decide to bake a 500 gram loaf.
Simply multiply the flour(570) by .5 to get 285. Water 371x.5=185.5 (round to 186).
Let's say you want 1500 grams of Total Dough Weight.
Flour - 570x1.5=855 and Water - 556.5
Does this with each and every ingredient to resize the formula to fit your needs.
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Below is a formula from Michael Wilson.
In Italy Ciabatta is mostly a CY leavened bread and the standard formula as per Giorilli is as follows:
Biga with 80% of the flour:400g bread flour180g water1.3g Instant Dry Yeast OR 4g fresh cake yeast Rise at 61-64F (16-18C) for 16-18 hrs Final dough:All of the biga
100g flour
220g water5g diastatic malt
10g salt
- Mix using the bassinage method until silky smooth.
- Rise in bulk until double, cut pieces, shape dust with plenty of flour and let leaven until ready.
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Ciabatta con pasta madre biga *** SEE THIS LINK ***
(SD biga) submitted by Michael Wilson
Biga: 16.5hrs @ ~18°C
300g flour
125g water
30g LM (50% hydration), refreshed twice
Main dough:
75g flour
3.5g diastatic malt
7.5g salt
200g water
15g olive oil
84.8% total hydration
81% PFF
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While that is basically the standard approach, I am conscious that these authentic formulas don't necessarily translate all that well using American flours. With that in mind perhaps Craig Ponsford's formula is most appropriate. I'll see if I can track it down..********************************************************
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Danny
I agree with Alan, I think it is underproofed Ilya, kinda like what mine was like. Doesn’t look overproofed to me.
Ilya, you wrote. “ Making the biga was easy, but mixing the final dough by hand with so much 50% hydration biga is a real problem”. Many bakers express problems incorporating the stiff biga into the final dough water. With a little patience this can be a relatively easy process. Try to reduce the size of ant large lumps of biga. Scissors work well. Start mixing the biga and water by stirring in such a way as to break down (to dissolve) the pieces. I’ve tried many tools. A wisk, wooden dowel, a fork, my hands, whatever works. Stir, stir, and stir some more. It will incorporate and turn to a consistency of very heavy cream. Tip - if you really want to get a homogeneous mixture, use a stick blender after the lumps have been reduced some.
” Since mixing the final dough, a problem of lowly hydrated clumps were a problem.” Since most of the final dough consisted of pre-fermented flour, the lumps (dry bits) probably came from your biga. Once the biga is thoroughly incorporated, that problem should cease.
Thought - It is possible that the acid derived from your sd starter (considering the long fermentation) is adversely affecting your dough. Michael taught me that the properly prepared LM brings very little acid to the dough.
Thanks for the ideas! I've been considering using a blender (although I don't have a stick one), but I was worried it would destroy the gluten that had developed, have you tried doing it?
I am not keeping a proper LM, but just a 50% hydration starter, in hopes to imitate it at least partially. It doesn't smell very sour to me, more on the sweet side, so hopefully shouldn't be too much acid from there.
Firstly, just about no run is a completely wasted effort. I made my living for years as a programmer, and one thing that I understood was that I learned best from my mistakes. Someone who never makes them may not understand why what worked, worked.
You say that you realized that you had used the wrong flour for the biga. That's the vast majority of the flour for this entire dough. So, before step two, you have already shot yourself in the foot if you are convinced that it was an error. Now, maybe you just wanted to peek under the hood and see what would happen if... And that's okay, as experiments are almost always a good thing. But if you had any real expectation that this potentially gross error could be corrected, then you may have also determined that maybe the better bet wold have been to chuck the biga down the chute and go back to square one. Sometimes, it's better to fold the hand and throw down the cards rather than to play them out.
The little dry solid bits. Unfortunately, this is the type of mix that requires a lot of manipulation to get them incorporated. I also had to deal with that.
I've yet to try ciabatta with mixing by hand, but I did recommend watching Mukgling's video for a model.
This is the type of dough that requires a lot of strength, built up two ways - the initial mix, and the subsequent stretch & folds at intervals during the BF. Of course if you use a boatload of yeast, you can perhaps get away with it, but the final product suffers in the end.
You can create some initial strength hand mixing by using a bassinage for high hydration doughs. I do it fairly often, so I know it can be done. Get some lower hydration strength built up in the dough first and then incorporate the bassinage.
When working with a ciabatta like dough, where we expect it to be quite extensible, the folding over itself technique from Ciril Hitz adds some strength as well as allowing you to control the extensibility rather than the reverse.
I think that your dough was overproofed because once the crust started to caramelize the crumb began to collapse for lack of enough internal gas leaving you with a "tell-tale" cavern just below the crust, and probably a too weak gluten structure, and the crumb turned dense.
When I programmed I used to say that I often made more mistakes than I got it right - of course it's what I turned over in the end that counted.... On your next run, you'll remember this experience and have a few corrections already well in hand!
Thank you, I also know all too well the utility of mistakes - both from programming, and from research. And this was not a failure, the bread is now what I intended, but it's actually very tasty!
I did indeed suspect that it was a doomed attempt, from Lance's comment yesterday. I would never through away dough (or a preferment, for that matter) - I was totally ready to just stick it into bread tins and pretend that never happened, is the dough was completely unusable for ciabattas.
Thanks for all the advice. I'll keep all this in mind for the future attempts.
I based my dough loosely on the Giorilli formula with 80% pre-fermented flour in a biga, 80% final hydration, 2% salt. Here the biga was 50% hydration and made from unbleached all-purpose flour, instant dry yeast at 0.25% of the biga flour (or 0.2% of the total dough), and 2.6% (total dough) vital wheat gluten. The biga sat 1 hour at room temp and 24 hours in the refrigerator. Instead of diastatic malt, I replaced the remaining 20% wheat with sprouted hard white wheat. The VWG was calculated to raise both wheats to approx. 13% protein. I scaled for one big 1kg ciabatta.
Per my usual, I had soaked the wheat berries overnight two days before the bake, drained in the morning and kept moist for about 12 more hours until rootlets could be seen, then refrigerated a second night. The morning of bake day, I weighed and ground the sprouts in a food processor with water to bring this portion to 80% hydration (including absorbed and added water) until they became a smooth dough. I added salt (2% final) into additional water bringing the biga up to 80% hydration, then combined everything as the final dough. I didn’t add any yeast except what had been in the biga.
I mixed in a Kitchenaid until the dough became smooth, cohesive, and passed the windowpane test. 40ml went into an aliquot jar. It took almost 5 hours to reach a 50% rise, at which point I shaped and finished proofing in a rice-floured tea towel at room temperature until 100% rise after another 1.5 hours, so 6.5 hours from the start of bulk fermentation. It seems adding extra yeast during the final mix would’ve been helpful to speed up the process. Then onto a baking stone at 450 deg F, 20 minutes with a pan of boiling water for steam. Afterwards lowered to 425 deg, removed the pan, and baked another 25 min. The ciabatta had a hard crust and was a bit darker than I intended. Inside, the crumb was soft and not at all dry. The flavor was pleasant but the crumb’s taste was somewhat overshadowed by toasty notes from the crust.
--Tom M
Super nice photos, Tom. I wonder what made the crust hard? Ovens are unique and cook very differently, but 45 minutes seems long. My oven cooks super fast, Ciabatta bakes from 20-23 minutes at 450F.
Great post!
Thanks for the comments, Danny! I suspect over-baking toughened the crust. This was my first ever free-standing loaf and I wasn’t sure how long to go. I also got distracted and meant to check on it earlier. At 20 min I was pleased to see the oven spring but it looked like it could use more time. Yours were divided smaller than 1kg dough, weren’t they?
Tom, each loaf weighed about 335g, but larger loaves would cook much faster in my oven. Definitely not more than 28-30 minutes at most.
Your crust looks pretty thick to me.
jpg
By the way - your image of the mixed stringy Biga looks great. I am working to produce that.
Thanks again, Danny. I’ll try 28-30 min next time; I appreciate the guidance!
I used the biga method from the video that Ilya pointed out. I noticed they had their flour quite spread out and I tried to do the same by using one of my wider containers, sprinkling the yeasted water as evenly as I could.
Tom, I'm guessing the 20% sprouted mash added two extra variables (1-sprouting, 2-mashing), and made your loaf incompatible with the standard %-rise expectation of your formula.
While mashing/processing wet sprouted grain is an acceptable method of getting some wheat into a dough, it is a _work-around_, and is not equivalent to actually using flour, or even sprouted flour (flour made from sprouted grain that has been dried.)
Sprouted wheat is highly diastatic. My guess is your dough overfermented, but didn't rise due to the rheology (if that's the right word) of the mashed grains.
I've studied a bit from Reinhart's books "Whole Grain Breads" and "Bread Revolution". The former has some mashing in it, and the latter is about sprouted flour. Two things I picked up on: The diastatic nature throws off the ferment/proof timings, and the mashed nature works against retaining gas and against an open crumb.
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I bet your loaf was sweet and full of flavor, and exceptionally nutritious.
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And by "mashing" I don't mean that in the beer brewing sense. I'm using it to describe how you converted the wet grains into dough in the food processor without first making it into flour. It's a different "path", so the outcome is different, even if it looks like "dough" at the macro level.
Also, food prcoessors can wreck havoc on gluten if you process the dough too long. It quickly destroys gluten _after a certain point_ of mixing.
And... if you used the food processor to combine the biga and the 20% sprouted mash, that very likely had a negative effect on the nascent but still undeveloped gluten in the biga.
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Charles van Over wrote a book, Best Bread Ever, about using a food processor to mix _to a certain point_. But if I remember correctly, it is not used past that point.
Thanks for these thoughts, Dave. First up, I’ll take this opportunity to give an update on the bread, for the record. When it first cooled, the flavor was nice but I was somewhat underwhelmed. I froze slices, as usual. Since then, I found that the toasty flavor mellowed and I‘ve quite enjoyed eating it. The crumb had a simple but well-rounded and wholesome flavor. I highly recommend adding sprouted wheat to the ciabatta and I plan to do it again.
I agree that this formula and process were far from the original, but the Giorilli formula does use diastatic malt. So it’s hard to say whether the sprouted wheat had more or equivalent enzymatic activity in comparison to the specified malted flour. I regularly use a sprouted wheat mash like this and after a lot of tasty flops with it (overproofed collapses coming out of the oven), I read some posts on TFL of vital wheat gluten saving the day for sprouted wheat bread. I indeed have found it makes the sprouted wheat mash perform much better. I‘m too cheap to buy the sprouted flour, too married to get the dehydrator and grain mill, and my KitchenAid mixer struggled too much with the meat grinding attachment, so it has been the food processor ever since. Overall it works very well and because I am able to get windowpane with the mixed dough (even the mash straight out of the food processor is close), I don’t believe the gluten is too damaged. It’s worth considering, though, and I shouldn’t go crazy with the processing time. I used a mixer instead to combine the sprouted wheat mash with the equally-hydrated biga.
I’ve heard Reinhart call it a mash. I’m reading "Whole Grain Breads" before “Bread Revolution" but haven’t gotten there yet. Hasn’t he also sometimes called hot soaked/cooked grain a mash? I deliberately hadn’t used the term earlier because I wasn’t sure of the proper usage.
I don’t think we’ve reached a consensus on what to look for in the ciabatta proofing in this Community Bake. My dough was just starting to reach a jiggly state when I judged it done by the aliquot jar. Given the above considerations, what do you suggest for evaluating when to shape and when to bake a sprouted wheat ciabatta? Thanks again for putting this under the microscope.
—Tom
"Given the above considerations, what do you suggest for evaluating when to shape and when to bake a sprouted wheat ciabatta?"
I have no idea. But I'm tempted to use the Maine expression: "you can't get they-ah from hee-ah" due to the sprouted mash. ;-)
Malted wheat grain at the beer brewing store doesn't have rootlets showing, so if that's what "diastatic malt powder" is made from, then your home-sprouted wheat would be more diastatic, and at 20% would have a couple orders of magnitude more effect than a teaspoon of DM powder/flour.
A second thing is the VWG. It helps in small degrees, but for me, it always made cake-like crumb. Better to use higher gluten flour up front.
So, just making wild guesses here... Try bread flour for the biga (12% protein at least), reduce the mash to 5% (dry weight to total dry weight ratio), and use bread flour for the final dough, and eliminate the VWG.
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If you bake a lot, consider getting a 50 pound bag of KA Special Patent, which is their 12.5% bread flour, at a bakery/restaurant supplier. The going price is about $25 for counter sales, cash. The flour distributors are doing counter sales to the public due to their restaurant customers going out of business or scaling back.
Costco and Restaurant Depot are chains where you can sometimes find 25 or 50 pound bags of General Mills or other big name flour.
see my General Mills links here: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/62101/various-links
Good luck, amigo. et bon appétit!
although the end result looks pretty good. I'm a fan of ciabatta in the tubular loaf form as you have here, and looks to make an excellent sandwich bread. But...
Yikes! "It took almost 5 hours to reach a 50% rise, at which point I shaped and finished proofing in a rice-floured tea towel at room temperature until 100% rise after another 1.5 hours, so 6.5 hours from the start of bulk fermentation."
6.5 hours!! You are pretty much relying on the same formula as I used. My BF was 2 hours to double or more, and the proof was 40 minutes. No additional yeast added other than in the biga. One of the few variables that I can think of is ambient temperature. My kitchen is a pretty consistent ~78dF. If that is the singular difference, then your kitchen must be a lot colder.
Do you perform intermittent timed stretch and folds during the BF? Did your DDT end up at ~76-79dF or was it much cooler coming out of the mixer? I use all KA AP flour, and IDY in the biga, so nothing particularly noteworthy, and some folks here state that an even stronger flour should be used.
Alan, I believe my kitchen temp was close to 75 deg F, so I don’t think that was the difference. Good question about the dough temp. I didn’t measure it, though the biga and the sprouted wheat were refrigerated. Could be the tap water was cooler than usual too. The dough wasn’t cold to the touch but it was a smidge cool, come to think of it. Warm water would’ve been a good choice. Thanks for your ideas!
Oh, and yes I performed four sets of coil folds during BF. It’s encouraging to see structure develop after each of those when starting with such a slack dough.
—Tom M
See THIS LINK for compilation of all of my Ciabatta bakes.
I baked Michael's "Ciabatta con past madre biga". With the exception of the hydration, the formula was followed precisely. I chickened out on the water and reduced it by 25g. I imagined the 15g of olive oil would make things too wet for me. I was wrong, next time I'll use all of the water. The dough was a joy to work with. Following Mike's belief of thoroughly developing the gluten in the mixer worked super well. The dough was easily folded, like the video Michael shared. This is the first time I have seen a Ciabatta (LM biga) formula using sourdough for the biga. The Lievito Madre was very strong in yeast and it was washed prior to the final build. The flavor was pleasant and clean, but I hope to increase the complexity in future bakes. The texture of the crust (thin) and crumb (super light & airy) was excellent. The stars aligned for this bake...
The first image below shows the Lieveto Madre after 4 hours of fermentation @ 82F. The strength of the Madre far surpasses any typical SD culture. When the LM is out of the fridge, it is built 3 times a day. Two 4hr builds at 80-82F and one overnight build at ~ 62F. Michael has information posted to HIS BLOG.
” Typical daily build procedure:
0940 Storage mother, pH 3.7-4.1, lavaggio
1000 Refresh
1400 Refresh
1800 Refresh – Storage, 12-16hrs @ 15-18°C”
I hope someone can tell me why the dough doesn’t seal well. See Below. Is it possible that it is folded to aggressively or too much. I noticed how well Michael’s dough sealed after shaping. Mine doesn’t.
I am starting to get a grasp on the Lievito Madre process am excited to learn this technique. The leavening ability of this culture is phenomenal. The image below shows my baby wrapped up in his blanket ready to go to sleep. He’s a cutie...
Another Biga made from the LM is in cool retard now getting ready for tomorrow’s adventure.
Wow superb bake Dan, the crumb and crust look spot on to me.
on your final LM build! Not sure I've seen something that surpasses yours. Your cross cut slices look really good, with a lot of open, but no too open, crumb.
Can't answer why the loaf doesn't seal, as neither do mine at shaping time, but this seems normal to me with a ciabatta-like dough. It looks as though you baked these with seam side up. Was that a conscious decision?
Now that we're all starting to get the hang of what a super low hydration biga should look like after the resting period, it seems as though we are now getting on the same page with little variation. That's a good thing.
You've written that your oven bakes "fast", but the surface of the dough is mottled in coloration. Do you now why?
alan
Alan, as far a the crust coloration (mottled). I think that was a result of a quick bake (20min total). I was cautious to not over brown the loaf.
Seam side up? No, but it did fold the dough over itself after dividing. Still trying to learn to shape better.
Lievito Madre rise - for some reason the LM is not rising as much now. I think this happened in the past and after bathing the LM the strength regained. I believe the lack of acids enhance the rise. When the LM is healthy the rise is beyond imagination. It will triple of quadruple in 4 hours! My LM will be taking a bath at noon...
Michael - in theory you get a benefit from about 1% of solid fat to stabilize the bubble surface and then from abother ~2% of liquid fat as a crumb softener, though for a ciabatta I suspect that it gets consumed quickly enough the the crumb softening is perhaps not essential. But I wonder if you have a perspective on the value of using some solid fat in addition to or instead of liquid fat.
I'm curious about where this theory comes from -- are there actually more or less "optimal" percentages of solid and liquid fat for sourdough bread? I can't seem to find any sources on the benefits of certain percentages of fats, so I'm wondering where the 1% and 2% come from.
Or "good in parts".
This was a bake based on an LM biga with 75% PFF and loosely following the fundametals of the Giorilli bake.
Here's the flours I used:
Biga
350g Caputo Manitoba Oro
100g Caputo Cuoco (red)
67g well refreshed 50% hydration LM (15%)
4.5g salt (1%)
202g spring water (bottled water because Caputo flours have no added calcium and my town's water has no calcium) (45%)
The biga was mixed by my new method
Biga storage 16hrs at 17-18C
Main dough
All biga
114g Eurostar pizza flour tipo 0
30g Shipton mill Swiss dark
6g malt flour
9.7g salt
230g spring water
I had planned to go for 75% total hydration but luckily I didn't initially add all the water. The dough was really sloppy so I stopped at 70%.
Dough was mixed in the spiral mixer with about 4mins HS, once the dough was smooth. DT about 25C
I did several folds in bulk, which strengthened up the dough somewhat.
When well risen, I cut Giorilli sized pieces (190g) and proofed en-couche sideways and unshaped, like he does.
When well risen, I transferred to a baking sheet and baked at 230C with steam. 15mins low in the oven, then vent and finish near top of oven for about 7mins.
And this is what came out:
So, as you can see, appearance is not great, at least on the outside. I was happy enough with the crumb and the flavour was good. Texture was a little chewy, but acceptable.
Regarding the pale blotchy look, initially I thought the dough was too exhausted, but there again I'd added plenty of malt to counteract that.
On reflection I think it's simply down to the weight of the dough pieces and the cooking time. There simply isn't enough cooking time to brown this weight of dough and extending the time will just dry up the crumb.
I've had the same problem with baking rolls. If I bake Ciabatta in this style again I need to get more sugar in, eg some malt syrup or perhaps some milk?
If baked again I would reduce PFF to 50%
And lastly, a question: there appear to be two types of Ciabatta bake on the go; one is 190g small pieces like mine and basically just cut pieces, unshaped, and then there is a much larger version with shaped final pieces.
Why is this?
Lance
Lance, what was your reason for using so many flours? I wished we could source Caputa Manitoba Oro in the US. As far as I can tell it is not available, but the spec sheet looks really good to me. With the right flour, Michael’s formula with the correct flour is doable and pleasant to work with. I think the oil facilitates the relative ease of handling. It is a joy to handle.
Even though not Ciabatta text book giant holey crumb, I like your crumb and am working to consistently produce something similar. The big holes make a messy sandwich, but is good for dipping.
You and Michael have been working with LM. I hope you continue to share many bakes in the future. I need all the help I can get and am eager to learn.
Danny, Cuoco was simply to eke out my dwindling Manitoba stock.
The Eurostar followed a standard pattern of strong flour in preferments and weaker in the main dough. The tiny 5% of Swiss Dark was just to give a little flavour boost - it's an 85% extraction four - wheatmeal as they used to call it years ago.
Lance
I like your method of making the biga, that’s a great idea. I’m very hesitant to try making ciabatta with biga, it does seem that you need a powerful mixer to incorporate the biga into the dough. I have a newer KA mixer, likely with the plastic gears so it wouldn’t survive mixing dough at high speeds.
I will try making ciabatta without biga again soon.
Stick with the levain. Which I think I like better. than the biga version And if it isn't traditional, so what?
Yes that is true, the end result is what is important. I haven’t given up on ciabatta just yet, I don’t like my last bake of something not to be successful (doesn’t have to be perfect).
Benny, what we discussed about the KitchenAid and super low hydration does not apply to the biga. Mixing a 50% hydrated dough to full development is very different. When the biga is made it is not mixed to the point of any gluten development. To do so would be wrong. Done properly it puts little strain on your mixer. Michael uses a mixer that looks similar to the Kitchenaid on a regular basis. Don’t know if it is more heavy duty or not.
I have had good success mixing the biga by hand, stirring with a fork. The video link somewhere above mixes the biga without it ever being touched.
Michael made an important point. When properly done the leavening agent for the sd biga is leavened with Lieveto Madre and not our typical starters that have been reduced to 50% hydration. I am only beginning to learn about the LM, but the difference between it and a typical SD starter is major.
Alan, and most probably a host of others prefer the higher hydration preferments, but I am super jazzed about the Lieveto Madre (Thank You, Michael!). Also have no plans to eliminate the high hydration pre-ferments for certain breads. It will enhance some of my various breads in future bakes. Lance also seems to be a fan.
I am in the process of gathering lots of information about the Biga, Lieveto Madre, and the Pasta Madre. Note - LM and PM are one in the same. It will be post to a separate topic when complete. I struggled for 2 years to gather enough information a out this Italian pre-ferment. Most of the info is written in Italian.
By the way, if you are struggling to translate some important sources, I can ask some Italian speakers to help. My girlfriend is half Italian and speaks quite well, otherwise I also know some proper Italians.
That’s great to know, Ilya! I use Google Translator, but sometimes it doesn’t get things right.
How I wish i could read Italian. Unable to find ANY authoritative books on the subject written in English.
Just as with programming, a formula will use a lot of repetitive words in the instructions. Once you can discern words like flour, water, salt, crumb, crust, mix, rest, add, divide, fold, shape, bake, rack, ... most of the rest takes care of itself. Maybe nuances are lost, but the general info is all there. Here, just for fun try this...
Pan de Cristal
Autor: Miriam García
Tipo de receta: Pan Cocina: Internacional
Preparación: 12 horas Cocinado: 35 min Total: 12 horas 35 min Raciones: 8
Pan de cristal, fino y con muy poca miga, para tomar con charcutería y aceite
Ingredientes
400 g de harina de fuerza
340 g de agua
8 g de sal
3 g de levadura liofilizada de panadero (9 g de levadura fresca) (1)
Instrucciones
Some of us found it useful when Alan took the time to consolidate the bakes of some of the active participants in the Baguette CB in a PDF file. With that in mind, the following may be beneficial to not only the baker, but also those looking to learn and gather information at some time in the future.
This was posted in the original post of this CB. Unless a better solution is offered this will be posted in all fufure CBs.
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SOMETHING NEW - Since many of the CBs grow quite large, it can become difficult to follow the progress of each individual baker. Things get very spread out. In an attempt to alleviate congestion and consolidate individual baker’s breads post, the following is suggested.
All participating bakers that consolidate their bakes the a BLO.g post will be linked in the original post for all to see.
Links to baker’s BLOGs that have posted a compiled list of bakes for this CB
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Stiff levain and high hydration sans bassinage and less fermented flour is how I make Pain Levain.
Looks like Rubauds breads minus the whole grain flour. I make my breads like this way too so they fit in to the wood burning oven. Ooni oven makes good bread with the descending heat after pizza is done.
Stiff levain and high hydration sans bassinage and less fermented flour is how I make Pain Levain.
Looks like Rubauds breads minus the whole grain flour. I make my breads like this way too so they fit in to the wood burning oven. Ooni oven makes good bread with the descending heat after pizza is done.
See THIS LINK for compilation of all of my Ciabatta bakes.
Dan’s Bake #7 - Once again I baked Michael's "Ciabatta con past madre biga". This time I went with the full hydration and it handled like a dream. I attribute that to the oil and also the well developed gluten. Folding on the bench (like Michael’s video) was a rewarding and pleasant experience. It also seems the Caputo 00 Americana is an ideal flour for the task. I have yet to taste the bread, but my neighbor has had over a hundred loaves on my bread and she messaged me that, “this is the best bread yet”. Taste Update - The bread sat on the counter (uncut) overnight. Once again the crumb was soft, springy, and not hint of dryness. The crust was only slightly crisp and had a very minimal leathery chew. The flavor is best described as clean with the slightest hint of sour. So much so, you have to look for it or it might be missed. As a perfectionist, I am rare satisfied, but this bread checks almost all of the boxes. I recommend that any of the more adventurous bakers, build a Lieveto Madre and see for yourself. IMO, it is worth the effort.
My Ciabatta shaping skills need serious improvement, but I’m pleased with all other aspects. The highlights of my baking improvements gained from this CB are learning the Lieveto Madre and the SD Biga.
The bread has a thin crust and soft texture. There is practically no resistance to the bit and the crumb is moist. It works well for sandwiches and does well with a light toasting.
Wow now that is an open crumb Dan, you’ve very quickly upped your ciabatta baking, incredible.
Even though the outside looks like a specimen from the Martian surface as most ciabattas do. I hope to give ciabatta a try soon but my schedule only allows for sustenance baking right now. When I have more free time I would like to learn more about how you made your levito madre. Is there a Panettone CB in the future?
Don, funny you ask. I was researching Panettones when the notification of your post arrived. I tried to get Michael to host a Panettone CB this December, but he is busy with school. I am presently looking for another baker experienced with the bread.
I am excited to hear your interest in Lievito Madre. It really isn’t difficult to start from your existing starter. But maintenance when on the counter is a fairly strict regiment. It can be stored in the fridge, though.
Although the LM is similar to our typical staters, it produces very different results. I plan to bake baguettes with the LM... French bread with an Italian starter.
That's some mighty fine looking open crumb ya gots there! You say the crust is thin, but is it soft or does it have a crunch and crackle to it?
I can see the stretch marks, not just on the sides of my waist, but also on your bread! Still some work to do when handling the dough, either in preshape or transition to the baking peel. Shouldn't take long to get the gist of it. And once you have it, you have it!
alan
Alan, the crust is thin, but because of the oil it is not crackly.
Yea, shaping is my nemesis. Some of my problem may be related to over folded dough. Because the gluten is well developed the dough can become tenacious.
The pan de cristal has 5% oil which should make the crust tender. But it doesn't in this bread. However, the formula also has me adding 2% sugar, something that on the face of it, I'd never consider doing. The sugar seems to have the effect of getting a darker and crisper crust. Mr. Hamelman states that sugars in the dough at low levels will have the effect of contributing to a darker crust. No word on helping to create a crispness to it.
Alan, your point is opposing and makes me think (a great thing). I can’t account for your experience and I don’t doubt it. The oil in the Ciabatta I’ve been baking lately is producing a breads that are pleasantly softer.
I hope we can find the truth about this. Thanks for the opposing experience...
“the truth sets us free”
where he states "More water (around 110-120% hydration), and just a small quantity of sugar and olive oil. Sugar makes the crust thinner and crispier. That's why this bread is called Pan de Cristal (Glass bread), because it's so delicate that when you want to slice it, it breaks like a cup of glass. Olive oil not only brings mediterranean aroma and flavour, but also changes the structure of the crumb."
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/50220/pan-de-cristal-glass-bread
Dan,
A YouTube (The Sourdough Journey) from Tom Cucuzza did an experiment on four loaves. He went from NO shaping to tight shaping and two versions in between.
He actually found that a tighter roll was better:
"The Impact of Final Shaping on Open Crumb"
https://youtu.be/bbOyivhCL40
In any case, the difference was not so much noticeable to a beginner like me and alleviated a lot of worry. Which is good because I hate worrying over bread.
Murph
Thought this looked interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OeV-14GLVc
No shaping, and no final proof after dividing, directly into the oven!
Thanks for posting that video Ilya. I think I will use the mixer as he did for my next attempt at ciabatta. The recipe is otherwise quite similar to what I was using already that Joy Ride Coffee had shared on YouTube except that he did everything by hand. Since there isn’t really any low hydration mixing component my mixer should be able to handle it I hope.
I mixed a dough with biga today - although only 25% prefermented flour, so smaller one - by adding most of the water required for the final mix, and using a hand mixer at top speed (didn't seem to cut it - pun intended - on lower speeds), like suggested above by Danny. Still takes a while, but saves the shoulder pain. Got a very nice smooth dough like that! I think it would work with higher biga/water ratio too, but then I might be worried that the gluten from the biga would be destroyed and it might be important... Let's see how my bake goes though, of course.
But with a poolish it's all not a problem, of course, whatever would work to mix the dough.
See here for all of my Ciabatta CB bakes
I decided to reduce the prefermented flour, and use only bread flour. Also added a little olive oil. Formula: https://fgbc.dk/1025
Made biga in the morning and left by the window all day - measuring the temp, it as i the perfect range 16-18°C. Moved it to the fridge in the evening.
In the morning mixed it with most of the water for the final recipe using a hand mixer on top speed. That worked well, took a little while, but at least no hard hand work, and no annoying clumps in the end.
[url=https://ibb.co/yd96pM0][/url]
Did bassinage: 50 slap&folds, add most water, 50 slap&folds, add rest of water, slap&folds until pretty well developed.
Rest 30 min.
3x stretch&folds with 30 min rest, placed in a bulking container and bulk fermented until >50% rise (starting from after stretch&folds), took a while, around 4 hrs - all in all 6 hrs. Dough was very jiggly, felt very light and airy, certainly ready, maybe over even?
Preheating the oven right after dividing, 230°C.
Baked after just ~20 min proof.
Did an experiment for the final shaping for the bake: gently stretched on of the breads, and dimpled another.
Unfortunately got barely any oven spring:
[url=https://ibb.co/mFQ08yX][/url]
And the crumb is not particularly open:
[url=https://ibb.co/GHJ1vVy][/url]
Even more surprisingly, the crust is not crispy! Just mostly soft, only crispy in some darker spots on the ends that seemed to bake a little quicker. Never had a crust like that on any bread, at least in the first few hours after baking it's always crispy.
So, did I overferment the dough in bulk? Shouldn't forget about an aliquot jar next time, not used to it, but would be very useful...
Also I think I didn't preheat the steel enough, I was afraid of overproofing and rushed it a little. The bottom is a little pale.
Hydration: According to Mr. Hamelman, oils in the dough at room temperature are considered part of the overall hydration. Your overall hydration comes in at just under 83%.
The softer crust: Oils will "tenderize" the dough, particularly the crumb. However "at the slight expense of crust vigor", again according to Mr. Hamelman. I tend to take his word on such things.
The hand blender is a great idea, maybe even to do most of the final mix in a bowl.
Your shaping is really nice. The flatter ciabatta is much more typical than what some of us get in the log shape for large loaves. For me that may well be due to my shaping that stretches a surface tension "sheath" over the dough before couching.
This may relate back to the "magic grits" (My Cousin Vinny), but I don't get that my entire post mix process takes 2 hrs. 40 min to complete before shipping them off to the oven. Yet Tom M and you both report a 6-6.5 hr cycle? We seem to be using the same formula. How can there bo so much disparity? Are others getting similar BF & proof times to either of us?
Unless you've hitched your horses to a very large open crumb, if you can be content with a ciabatta that looks, smells, tastes, and is as light as what you expect it to be, then you have a successful ciabatta bake. If anyone complains, then remind yourself to serve them a marmalade laden or tuna salad slice when you do get a giant open crumb. That'll shut them up!
Thanks a lot for your comments!
Inclusion of fats in hydration calculation seems to be a contentious topic. As a scientist I can not bring myself to say that oil contributes to hydration, with oil and water being immiscible. However it certainly contributes to the softer dough and a slacker feel, so functionally works similarly. I am actually curious why it is possible to incorporate so much fat in the dough (e.g. brioche). Wheat proteins (gluten?) must work as sort of emulsifiers?
I only added <3% oil though, is that really enough to soften the crust so much? I've made bread with some olive oil before, and never noticed such a drastic effect!
I decided against doing the final mixing with the mixer (and not totally my idea to use it: Rus Brot often uses a mixer, although usually with spiral attachments that I sadly lack), but I don't have a good reason. Probably on the low speed it would work just fine for the first half of the flour or so.
I agree such logs that look almost like thick baguettes are probably not the most typical shape, but mine are basically frisbees, which is the other extreme. It needs to have some height I think.
Re rise time: it was a little cold here. In the beginning I couldn't observe any rise at all for some time, and measuring the temperature I got 20°C, so warmed up the dough by placing the bulking container above a tray of freshly boiled water (again, Rus Brot style!), and observed an immediate jump in fermentation and rise. Then I had to replace the hot water, since it goes cold pretty quickly in a flat tray.
Ha, well, no one needs shutting up luckily! But also ciabatta sandwiches are usually made on horizontally slices bread, so actually nothing would drip through the crust!
Ilya, it looks like you are steadily improving.
I am not familiar with your formula, but it seems that it is important to develop the gluten to the point where the dough is super supple, ultra smooth, and highly extensible. If developed enough the dough will remove from the mixing bowl in one piece, leaving the bowl basically clean. It will also remove from the counter in a single piece ehen lifted by hand. A dough like this is a joy to handle. When my doughs turn out as described the oven spring is enormous. Because of the hydration the membrane of the dough is super thin. Unless the gluten is highly developed the thin skin (crust) and thin cell walls (alveoli) are unable to handle the gas. I speak from experience. See THIS BAKE.
Thanks Danny. The gluten was very well developed with slap &folds early on, and some stretch & folds during bulk. It was a lovely dough, smooth and light. It did remove cleanly from the container, but I had oiled it lightly, so not sure if it still counts. And yet - alas, no oven spring.
I hope you won't mind if I join in. Although I've been lurking for years (and by "years," I mean decades, haha). I've rarely posted and only very recently. Anyway, last weekend I made the Craig Ponsford ciabatta in Maggie Glezer's book. As I added my 1/384th of a teaspoon of yeast to the flour, I was thinking that this couldn't possibly rise. And it didn't. Not one iota. Not a speck. It didn't rise and collapse when I was sleeping or anything like that. It just didn't rise. However, the description also said the biga would soften a lot and smell aromatic, both of which did happen. I almost tossed it but then decided that with only a small amount of AP flour at risk, I might as well proceed and see what would happen. It turned out better than expected considering the biga was effectively just a long autolyse. I left the loaves on the counter to cool and when I came back from the grocery store, the family had torn into it and the only crumb shot I was able to get was of someone's sandwich.
The heel they saved me tasted quite good. The crust was crispy if a tad thick and the crumb had a slight bit of chew to it, but was still airy and soft. Some of the holes were too large. Honestly, I'm not unhappy with the ciabatta, but I am confused by it. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on why the bread worked out fairly well when the biga flopped so badly.
I should say that everything was done exactly as specified in the book; no modifications were made. I used my yeast within the last week and it performed perfectly, as it did here in the final dough. KAF Bread Flour was used in the biga and Central Milling ABC Plus was used in the final dough. The whole wheat was Bob's Red Mill and the rye was KAF Whole Organic Rye. If you have the time, I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on this. Thank you ever so much.
It looks like a great result to me! The Ponsford formula is discussed a few times earlier in this Community Bake thread. People here have linked to this page and this page, which show other bakers’ Ponsford ciabattas. Yours may be a bit darker than theirs but the instructions at the first link say to bake “until very dark brown.” They call for 35-45 minutes at 450 deg F. What was your bake time?
I noticed that this formula doesn’t solely rely on the biga yeast but adds the majority to the final dough. If your biga didn’t expand as much as expected, perhaps the gluten was more developed? If so, the stiffness at low hydration may have held back the biga’s rise. Earlier in the Community Bake, there’s been discussion of limiting gluten development by minimal mixing and leaving the biga in small barely combined shreds.
Again, it looks like a very admirable bake. Thanks for joining in and sharing your bread!
Welcome to the CB, and don't think for one minute that we'll let you get away with just a singular bake on this thread! Not just a show-and-tell forum, the CBs are also designed to help and guide others who have taken a step or two and toward a new bread or skill and want to improve through the group's interaction.
A silk purse from a sow's ear. Nice bake.
That looks really great to me, great bake.
Benny
Looks pretty good to me and according to the account of your taste testers, they agree. I’ve baked Craig’s Ciabatta before but I don’t remember the formula. Was the biga low hydration? If it was, when mixed properly (not nearly enough to develop gluten) the preferment isn’t expected to rise much.
I hope you continue to bake Ciabatta with us. Glad you joined in, you are now part of the gang :-)
Danny
Thanks, everyone, for the warm welcome and your generous comments :-) This forum has been a trusted reference for me for probably about 15 years and I've always been grateful. It's nice to finally thank some of you personally.
According to the formula, this biga is supposed to be kneaded and should triple in size in 24 hours, which hardly seems possible given the minuscule amount of yeast; however, the writers of the two blog posts both said it worked for them. I must have erred somewhere along the way. I think Tom M is right about the biga needing some breathing room. It was very tight and compacted, so I'll experiment with the technique in the pizza biga video.
To answer the other questions: It’s a stiff biga, but not ridiculously so. Mixing it by hand took a few minutes but was not s struggle. The book says the biga is 61% hydration, but it is 56% by my math (330g flour, 185g water). Total formula hydration is 80.5%. The first bake was at 450°F for 37 minutes. It was well-browned at 35 minutes but felt a bit heavy so I gave it a couple extra minutes. Next time, I will judge that more conservatively. I’m excited to have another run at this and will report back. Thanks again!
-AG
Well, now he's done it! I've violated the basic tenets that the very bedrock of the CB for Ciabatta rests upon. And I'm so so sorry. But what the heck...
Glass Bread/Pan de Cristal/Pa de Vidre is a close relative of ciabatta, so I thought I'd upset the ebb and flow here by posting today's entry. For those not familiar with it, the bread has its roots, best that I know, in the Catalan region of Spain. I'm not certain whether it can be purchased over the counter at a bakery or solely relegated to table service in restaurants and bars. It earns its name through the very thin and crackly crust that "shatters like glass" when cut or bitten into.
Our able Abel Sierra, a native of the region, introduced TFL to his version a few years ago. It is a near impossibility to wrangle this dough into anything that approximates something that doesn't look like an accident, although they may be better suited for those baguette type trays that I've been loathe to consider. Until maybe now...
Hydration for this bread can be an insanely high 110%-120% hydration, a neighborhood where I would never dare to tread. The hydration for my version clocks in at 95% and employs a combination of a biga and a levain, with an added boost of IDY. The dough mixes like a much wetter version of a ciabatta, and I still look and listen for the visual and auditory signals that the mix is done. The entire BF takes place in a mere 100 minutes with folds at 0, 30, & 60 minutes. And the dough will easily triple in size by then (in my warm kitchen).
At that point the real challenge begins, whereby after dumping the dough out onto a well floured counter, squared away, I double it over onto itself, Ciril Hitz style. Easy enough to divide, but if the divided dough comes in contact with the remaining bulk, It will rejoin itself to the bulk. Which is what happened on the parchment paper pictured above.
Once divided it is stretched onto a piece of parchment paper and without delay (no proofing), immediately baked. For those who can't take their eyes away from what is going on in the oven every minute or so, the bread will be disappointing. After initially plumping up, over the course of the bake it will pretty much flatten out. The nature of the beast.
To give this dough some added strength I relied on 90% Pillsbury bread flour with an assumed 12.9% protein and 10% KA WW at 14% protein. For a bread that should have a clean taste to it (think ciabatta or Bouabsa), the WW steals some of that. So the WW will be 86'ed the next time.
Bake 460dF for 13 min. with steam, 17 min. at 440dF after rotating loaves, 3 min. venting. Cool loaves upside down as there will be moisture released from the underside of the loaf.
If you feel that you've conquered the challenges of ciabatta, this just might be on your hit list. I dare you!
1200g total - 4 loaves
I have not conquered the ciabatta so the pan de cristal is not yet on my radar. Your version looks mightily fine though, and kudos to you for challenging yourself to a supercharged version of a ciabatta. Nothing wrong with adding this to the CB since they are quite closely related.
Alan, those babies look great! That’s my kind of crumb and the color of the loaves are “signature alfanso”.
I think you can safely put this bread in the “Spanish Ciabatta” category. This way, we won’t have to assess a fine for sneaking off the reservation. <LOL>
crazy! I have been wanting to attempt this recipe for quite some time. Should have done it while we had tomatoes from the garden to smear on it. The hydration seems daunting to me of all people! Your version came out great. Is it the sugar that crystalizes the crumb? Thanks for reminding me and posting the formula.
Mr Hamelman is used for coloration of the crust (just a generic from his book and not specific to this bread). According to Abel Sierra it makes the crust thinner and crispier.
It is a fantastic bread for bruschetta and for toast. My preferred slice is across the length of the bread as it is thin. For just dipping in olive oil, the standard vertical cut should suffice. In Barcelona, we found that the rubbing of the tomato on it, their way of eating it, just didn't entice us as much.
See THIS LINK for compilation of all of my Ciabatta bakes.
Dan’s Bake 8 - A good friend had a saying, “sometime chicken, sometime feathers”. Today I got feathers :-)
You probably guessed it, I baked Michael's "Ciabatta con past madre biga" AGAIN. Small changes have a way of making large changes. I THINK the problem starter when the decision was made to finished up the 16 hr biga ferment for the last 2 hr at 82F. The first 14 hr it rested at ~62F. I had hoped to bring a little more acidity to the bread, but the additional acid may have harmed the gluten. I really don’t know what else to think. I knew something was not right during the machine kneading. The dough refused to come together as it had in the past. I began to question if maybe I had mis-measured the water or something similar. After considerable mixing the dough remained slack. I ultimately added 20% more flour, but the dough never did look like the past bakes of the same formula. I was accustomed to super supple and extremely extensible dough. While in the mixer the dough never did completely smooth out. This bake will be valuable to me if the troubleshooting assumptions are correct.
The bread has a more acidic flavor, which was nice. And the sandwiches are killer. If you happen to have Olive Salad in your cabinet, give it a try. It is made for Ciabatta. Will if you read this, make sure you give it a go. You are guaranteed to love it.
Because of the weak gluten, the dough was unable to hold enough gas. The lack of spring and the crumb reflects that.
Danny, I think you are right about the degraded biga gluten. I had a similar problem a while ago when making pizza with LM. It hadn't risen as much as it should in the alloted time (ie the fire was nearly ready!) so I hiked the temperature and ended up with slop!
And I think my recent chiabatta bake suffered from degraded gluten. In hindsight, I should have fermented at 16C/61F, not 18C/64F, as well as for less time.
Having used LM a few times, I have come to the conclusion that it is a very difficult product to use: it is high maintenance in preparation (mixing multiple 45/50% refreshes is a PITA) and has no margin whatsoever for error in its use.
Of course when it works well it's great, (and others may not have my problems with it) but I think it might be a rabbit hole (as Alan woud call it) that I won't be rushing down again too hastily.
Lance
I abandoned Daniel Leaders formula that I used in my first bake (grossly over-proofed) in favour of Jeffrey Hamelman’s Ciabatta with stiff biga. The ciabatta was one of the five breads baked in Paris 1966, at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie. The exceptional quality of the ciabatta helped earn the United States first prize. So, with those credentials, I had to give it a go.
I used my mixer to incorporate all the ingredients and finished kneading on the bench. The bench scraper got a good work-out as the dough was sticky, being 73% hydration. My flour of choice for this bake was a white flour of 12.5% protein. Bulk fermentation of 3 hours with folds at 1-hour intervals. I gently fashioned a loose rectangle and placed onto my couche. I only prepared a single 510-gram dough, so I nestled the couche inside an oblong banneton for support. The kitchen today was a nice 24°C, so I did not need the proofer. The dough rose as expected and was ready for the oven in 90 minutes. It held its shape when I turned it out onto the peel.
Baked at 238°C/460°F in a pre-steamed oven, with steam for first 10 minutes of the bake. I lowered the oven to 230°C/446°F as the loaf browned. The oven spring was much better, and I was relieved that it did not over-proof. The result was more of a regular loaf profile though. How do I keep it more of the traditional slipper shape?
The crust is crisp and tastes sweetish.
Cheers,
Gavin.
Good looking ciabatta Gavin. Some of the bakers stretch their dough before baking with their hands. I forgot to do this and my ciabatta (also underproofed) ended up much more barrel shaped than slipper shaped as well.
Thanks, Benny. I shall remember to stretch the dough next attempt.
And with that pedigree, I should look into giving it a go myself.
A bit untraditional shaping for a ciabatta, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Same holds true for here.
In the interest of not advising you to ruin the bread for the next run, you could stretch it out on its travel from the basket onto the baking peel. The method is common enough, either when it goes from shaping to a couche, or from the couche to the baking peel - my preferred method, although both are equally as effective.
If it is in a flatter slipper shape, you wouldn't have those beautiful slices anymore. It depends on what type of end product you want for the occasion.
Thanks for the tip about stretching the dough. I forgot on this occasion as I was so pleased the dough had good structure. I stretched the dough on my first attempt but it was over-proofed and collapsed in the oven. Looks like attempt #3 is looming.
Cheers,
Gavin
Nice looking slices, Gavin. Your bakes seems to validate the statement, “if you want your bread to rise up use a biga, if you want it to spread use a poolish”. This truth is being demonstrated more and more as we pursue this CB.
IMO, this crumb is better suited for sandwiches. Ideally, I would like to produce both your crumb and also typical Ciabatta crumb on demand, as long as the flavor can be maintained.
Please describe how your biga was made and mixed.
Yes, I think you're right about the rise theory.
The biga contained 20% pre-fermented flour from the overall formula. It was a stiff biga that was 60% hydration and 0.066% instant dry yeast.
BIGA instruction summarised: Disperse the yeast in the water, add the flour, and mix until just smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic and leave for 12 to 16 hours at about 21°C. I mixed by hand in a bowl.
What is your advice on a more open crumb? Is it just to raise the hydration or is there some other mystery that has eluded me thus far?
and don't mind being on the untraditional side (my specialty!) - use a levain instead of a biga altogether. Mixing in a liquid levain is about 1,463.7 times easier than trying to incorporate a very low hydration biga.
Here is evidence that you can get significant rise out of a levain based ciabatta although the holy-er than thou holes in this example aren't really open. But all the flavor and characteristics are otherwise there.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66219/community-bake-ciabatta#comment-472184 .
Edit: Just noticed that Tom M also called it out a few comments below this one.
whew. This thread is long!
i’m not sure if I missed a posting regarding using 100% wild yeast. I no longer use commercial yeast, and have spent this covid season converting all my recipes to sourdough starter.
Currently I’m working on a wild yeast version of Newfoundland raisin bread, but this CB caught my eye.
Glad to see you join in. Many of us are following the Italian method using a biga. The biga can be leavened with either sd or commercial yeast. It is a different process from our norm but the results have been good and getting better.
Hope all is well with,
Danny
The starter-based Ciabatta formulas that have been posted so far are Doc's Sourdough Ciabatta using a 60% hydration levain and Alfanso's Levain Ciabatta using a 100% hydration levain, unless I'm forgetting any other. Both use a kicker of commercial yeast, but small enough percentages that I expect you could leave them out without making other adjustments to the formula.
looks like my next bread bake will be a wild yeast ciabatta!
I will concoct my own recipe
Hey Diane, are you from Newfoundland as my partner is? I’m curious about this Newfoundland raisin bread, have you posted it anywhere?
Benny
Hi Benny,
I am a Brooklyn gal ...although I have been living upstate New York for several decades (Upstate as in on Lake Ontario border).
I decided I wanted to bake bread with more character, molasses, a bit of brown sugar, an egg, and raisins, if I feel like it. I found a couple of recipes with those ingredients in “newfoundland bread” on the Internet, one with lard (gag), so I decided to develop my own wild yeast recipe. I’m working through version two.
it has a fairly dense, slightly sweet crumb, slices beautifully. I’ve used it for sandwiches and also topped with slices of gjetost and a dollop of peach jam!
Certainly the antithesis of an airy ciabatta.
Why not? it makes no difference to me which side my bread is buttered :-)
Ah very good, well if you work out a good formula for your 2.0 version, please post it in your blog I’d love to see it and try it.
Benny
I will share the the final tested master recipe with photos.
Diane
I understand if you have religious/cultural reasons for avoiding lard but otherwise I would encourage you to give it a try. It has a neutral flavour and in my experience makes the best pie crust plus it is healthier than a lot of 100% vegetable shortening. Tallow on the other hand is a fat I avoid as it has flavour that is hard to clear from my palate. Lard might not be right for you but then again it could be better than you think.
Quite a few years ago I made ciabatta and so I thought I would remake the recipe I used then. So this is Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe from "The Bread Bible". I doubled her recipe so as to give 2 ciabatta.
8:45 am mix the Biga. 100 g bread flour + 50 g lower protein flour + 0.4 g instant yeast + 118 g water.
This was hand mixed with wooden spoon for about 5 minutes, covered and left.
14:45 mixed the dough using my old Kenwood Chef and the K beater
272 g bread flour + 1.6 g instant yeast + 6.6 g salt and 236 g water. I mixed for 3 minutes on speed #6 but felt it needed more so mixed for an additional 2 minutes at this speed before lowering to speed #4 as per recipe. Dough came cleanly away from bowl. I scraped dough into oiled container and left to triple in size as per recipe.
This was supposed to take 90 minutes but it was cooler in my kitchen so it took twice that time.
18:25 shape. To do this I tipped dough out onto well floured bench, folded dough carefully one fold then divided dough. I was following the instructions also with shaping so just pushed the sides of the dough together and patted length to what I wanted. I then carefully flipped dough sideways onto parchment and pushed the the two ciabattas so that the parchment separated them and covered with large container. The oven was preheated with lava rocks and my pizza stone. After 75 minutes I carefully placed both ciabatta on pizza stone, poured boiling water over the lava rocks and baked for 5 minutes at 500 deg F then 20 minutes at 475 deg F, turning front to back half way through the bake. Internal temperature was 212 deg F so I turned off the oven and left for a further 5 minutes with door cracked open. before removing them. About 5 minutes later I decided bottoms looked and sounded a bit "soft" so I returned ciabatta to oven for another few minutes.
So once these had cooled I cut them. This one is very soft delicate crumb, not as open as I thought it would be
and the other - well, the mice could have an adventure here -holes that are probably too big, lol
Thin crust, soft crumb - great!
Shaping - well "Could have done better" - next time will try a better method as there is really not a huge amount of height in these. I should also have removed the parchment when I removed lava rocks halfway thru the bake when I rotated the bread.
The bread is as light as a feather though - so some good, some bad! I think hydration is around 80%
Leslie
I love the look of them, so delicate. And your crust looks crackly and paper thin, just as it should be. Table breads, made for dipping! I made a batch tonight and forgot to flip and dimple them before loading them into the oven. They're still baking, but I'm expecting some oversize holes, too. So what, they'll still taste great. Enjoy!
hopefully next batch will be better. I really didn’t put much effort into dimpling so will remember to do that
Leslie
this looks quite fine to me. Except for those, um, small holes in the last picture!
alan
lol, thanks Alan. I will have another go next week trying to get a bit more height. Happy with crumb but I need to probably dimple more firmly to discourage mice adventurism :)
Leslie
A number of us have been stopping the bulk fermentation at 50% rise and letting the shaped dough proof to 100%, but I checked Will’s posting of the Giorilli process and cross-checked elsewhere. BF to 100% is called for, then rough shaping by division and proofing until very jiggly/light. Maybe I missed it — is anyone doing this longer bulk?
I think Ciabatta should be bulked much more than the typical 30-50% rise. Since it is generally not shaped much or at all 100% (doubling) seems better.
OK I have ciabatta dough in the proofer so this is well timed. I should aim for 100% rise during bulk fermentation the, is that the general consensus, not that we must stick to consensus statements. ?
I should add that I am trying the same formula again with 100% hydration levain. I’ve used the stand mixer at low speed to help with building gluten early on as advised.
This dough is so silky smooth and so far a joy to coil fold. I’m uncertain how far I’ll push bulk though definitely more than 50% but probably not 100%.
Benny, I would think the strength of your flour will also have a baring on the degree of rise.
I am in the process of sourcing Caputo Manitoba flour. It is super strong.I am hopeful that it will handle the brutal fermentation that my SFSD must under go. We’ll see.
Yes Dan you’re very right. I’ve never pushed any sourdough in bulk to double, scary stuff LOL. Let’s see how adventurous I feel later tonight. I’ve just given the dough a 2nd coil fold. I used the mixer for mixing autolyse, then adding levain, then mixing at bassinage of salt, water and olive oil. It was a slow process since I didn’t want to push my KA mixer higher than 2. The dough I’m working with now is so supple and non sticky, very enjoyable to coil fold.
Benny, when a dough id highly developed sticking ceases. I think Doc can verify that.
what flour ate you using for the chibby?
Yes that is very very true, I never use the mixer so this is one of the first times I’ve really developed the dough early on and it really has a different feel. The recipe uses 19% whole red fife and 81% bread flour 13.3% protein.
Unfortunately I started this a bit on the late side and I’m going to have to end bulk earlier than I had wanted. So it will go into cold retard until tomorrow. I’ll give it some bench time tomorrow after work to hopefully catch things up before shaping and baking.
I’m starting a 50% hydration levain tomorrow morning for 100% levain ciabatta Friday. Please keep us posted, Benny! :)
Definitely Tom. I will post the formula if it turns out well enough. I’ll post photos whether or not successful.
Benny
Tom, what is your reasoning for building a 50% levain one day in order to build a 100% levin from it the following day? That seems unusual to me.
By 50% hydration levain, I meant a sourdough biga, and by 100% levain ciabatta, I meant 100% prefermented flour ciabatta. I wasn’t calling it a biga since it’ll be starter-based. Gotta work on my clarity.
I want to treat it like CY to minimize the sourness. After 24 hours in the fridge, I’ll raise the hydration and add oil.