Ciabatta ... need some advice.

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noyeast on 11 Jul 2011 at 18:27
Hi all, I'm in need of some advice with my ciabatta loaves, they are coming out of the oven with a crumb that has huge 5cm and 3 cm holes instead of lots of smaller 1 cm and 0.5 cm holes and they deflate a lot as they cool down. Here's what I'm doing : 1 kg hi grade flour (including about 70 gms of gluten flour) 38 gms compressed fresh yeast 10 gms improver 20gms salt 20 gms oil 560 gms water mix on low speed 1 minute, then rest for 10 minutes. mix on hi speed 25 minutes (or untill the dough starts to climb up the dough hook) Ferment 10 mins then perform one french fold, then leave to ferment til trippled in size. Once trippled, I place the dough onto a floured benchtop and cut into 3 pieces, shape into ciabatta loaves and place on baking paper and proove for a further 20 minutes whilst the oven comes up to temp of 200 C. I Slide the loaves and paper onto hot baking stones, turn oven down to 170 C and bake for approx 20 mins. As the loaves cool down, they deflate somewhat and have very large holes which I don't want, I want lots of smaller ones. There is a lot of oven spring, possibly too much ? What am I doing wrong. If I proove for less time, I know I'll get less spring and less gas developing but I'm afraid I'll get no holes at all. And should I be adding the gluten flour or not ? Help please ! Thanks. Paul.

I never use gluten flour or whatever dough improver is, I just use unbleached (sometimes even bleached) flour in my ciabattas and they always come out nicely.  I think you can go overboard on dough enhancements or improvers or whatever you want to call them, unless the flour you have is very weak.

Hi Paul,

While PaddyL is quite correct that the use of very strong flour plus extra gluten is counter-productive to making the finest ciabatta, I am not necessarily convinced this is why you are having problems here.

Once you have mixed the dough, the bulk proof process should consist of a sequence of "stretch and folds", carried out delicately enough to allow the development of that random and large bubble structure you are looking for.   Following that you move from a "wet stage", where oil or water are used as medium to handle the sticky wet dough, to a "dry stage" where liberal amounts of flour on the hands and work bench are used to stop the dough from sticking as you scale and shape the dough pieces.   I am afraid the secret to success is how gently you can carry out all these stages, and the only way to perfect it is to practice, practice, practice.

I would also encourage you to follow the advice above and find a flour more typical of that used in Italy, and not develop it so extensively and fortify with further gluten.   The strength of the dough will develop of its own through the course of fermentation.

Best wishes

Andy

Thanks folks, I'm taking all that into account and sat down last night with pen and paper to adjust my recipe accordingly. I'm going to use non manipulated flour, reduce my mixing time substantially, use a different fermenting container, one that will permit the dough to "flow" a little thinner during the first two or three folds and I can perform these somewhat gentler, if I can get in a forth fold easily, I will, and that will be with individual final cut pieces and folded to final shape, reduce my proof time slightly and we'll see what improvements these changes make. I will report back shortly. Thanks again. ps any further help is still welcome ...
Thanks for the advice, I've taken it on board and as mentioned this morning, I baked a 3 loaf batch today emplying the suggestions above. I'm now very pleased with my ciabatta loaves, the crust is chewy, the crumb has a much better texture slightly chewy with much smaller holes. There was no deflating after cooling off. I'm a bit worried these loaves will dissappear right off the bench very quickly. I will post a couple of pix just as soon as I can remember how to do it on this forum ??? Cheers, Paul.