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..********************************************************
******* PLEASE READ *******
Some of the Community Bakes get very large with many post. If a user replies to ANY post in the CB they will (by default) receive email notifications for all new replies. If you post a reply and later you find that the notifications to that Topic are more than you would like you can either (1) opt out or (2) recieve replies to your post only. See image below.
Danny
Great to see your success! A couple of detail questions: what scale was your dough and if still using Wheat Montana AP, do you happen to know the protein %?
I used 500 grams of Wheat Montana AP again. The protein is hard to discern from their label but I have heard it is less than 11%.
Then your beautiful crumb really calls into question whether we need a high gluten flour here...
Outstanding in all respects.
Here’s the brilliant part.
” I floured the cut line down the middle and pinched it down with the edge of my peel before cutting it with a dough scraper.”
I’m diggin’ the peel deal... super innovative.
Is it correct to assume that the peel pinched down the dough and sealed it, eliminating section of skinless dough that we normally get when cutting with a bench knife?
It’s a host of comments and tips like this that make the CBs so beneficial.
You can use a dowel or something blunt enough to compress the dough down before cutting it. It may spead open again when you bake it. I learned that from of all things a book https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309299/in-search-of-the-perfect-loaf-by-samuel-fromartz/
A good read for us breadheads!
All around beauties, the shaping is exquisite. Nothing more to say - wonderful bake.
The other side of the elongating - from your counter to couche. Vs. from my couche to baking peel. Both do the job quite nicely!
from The Sopranos was called The Bada Bing. Those were strippers and not slippers on display.
My fully proofed ones did not want to stretch during the loading the last time but this time doing it before laying them on the couche was fairly easy. I may go for a stones length slipper next time.
decided to become a musician after hearing this song...https://youtu.be/SKYVOubhqJY?t=60.
Sumpin' else Roy - I spent the first 39 years of my life in NYC and I never, never, ever heard anyone say fuggedaboudit. Occasionally in contact with some "rougher" family background types.
I was inspecting your gorgeous OPEN crumb Ciabatta. You definitely scored your goal. But here’s the funny part. I had to laugh out loud when I thought this. “I hate myself every time I make a sandwich out of this stuff” <LOL> I need to take a bath after eating...
You and Dan are crumbing it up - looks great !
Here's my first community bake post. I used a 66% hydration SD levain made with KAF bread flour. For the main dough I used Caputo 00 flour and some fresh milled durum flour.
Everything was looking peachy until I let the dough over-ferment since I was working and lost track of time. I never use my couche when making ciabatta but since I saw some other bakers had some great results I gave it a try. Well.....not a good idea especially since I didn't use enough bench flour and combined with the over-fermented dough I had some sticky issues. I had to cut off some of the dough but it still ended up pretty good.
The taste is pretty good. It's got a nice SD twang to it and it has that nice ciabatta crust and open crumb.
Sorry for the crappy photos but I didn't have time to do my normal photo shoot.
Ian, everything about your Ciabatta looks like SD. Not a bad thing, just a comment. The coloration of the crust and crumb and also the appearance of the crumb texture is what I based the statement on.
Tangy Ciabatta sounds tasty...
What type of Caupto “00” did you use”? I am excited about Caputo Americana. It enhances extensibility and also I also think it tolerates long fermentation. I am in the process of sourcing Caputo Manitoba. It seems it is not easy to come by.
I normally buy the stuff in the red packaging. I bought it a while ago and don’t remember the exact spec. I’ll see if I can find it in my Amazon records. I usually use it fir pizza but figured it was worth a shot for ciabatta and I was right.
White lettering on a red background is Saccorosso (translation: red bag). 13% protein. W 300/320. P/L .50/.60. 25 kg package.
Red lettering on white background is Cuoco (Chef), 1 and 5 kg packages. also 13% protein. W 300/320. P/L .50/.60.
So, according to the specs, it looks like the same flour.
http://www.mulinocaputo.it/en/flour
Oh, I'm also attempting ciabatta today using the same flour, the one strong 00 flour I can easily get. I'll report back. So far it was difficult to develop by hand with 80% hydration, but I think it's manageable in the end. But probably the most mess in the kitchen I've had with any bake.
It's the taste that rules, of course, and I've had my share of ciabatta and other higher hydrations stick to the couche. Sometimes not a pretty sight. All times a nuisance.
Last Autumn I ran some ciabatta with 2 type of tritordeum - that hybrid grain from durum and barley. One was a "type 150" and the other "type 65". In both cases the flour mix was 50/50. So I know that we can get a really nice ciabatta from a lot of durum, if you want to take that to a much higher percentage. Also was able to use plain old KA AP instead of a "bread flour".
As a lover of durum, you should try the higher percentages, and unless you get into another "sticky situation", I'll predict that you'll really like it.
alan
I will definitely try the higher % of durum next time. It is important to keep in mind that fresh milled durum tends to be heavier than the factory milled and sifted flour so adding too much could have a negative effect on the ciabatta but it’s worth trying. I mill on the finest setting with my Mockmill II and sift once with a #30 sieve. It gets a lot of the bran out this way. If I wanted to go crazy I could go to a #40 sieve but it’s a lot of work and not worth it in my opinion.
That's my favorite kind of crumb for SD. You normally work with more ingredients so it's nice to see your naked bread.
I do have trouble sometimes controlling my impulse to throw in more ingredients ??
Drip art!
Dropped the hydration on my pan de cristal formula from 94.5% to 89.5%. Just for research and scientific study, ya know. Saw no difference, but think I came across an "interesting" feature, at least in my bakes. The loaves that came out with some height typically did not exhibit as much of an open crumb as those that baked flatter. Observed a few times across several bakes. However, the true crust shattering feature on the very thin crust was front and center, and a modest reheat on the oven brought out the best in this phenomenon. Our neighbor, recipient of many bakes, said that this was the best bread I've made so far. N.B. She loves a very very crusty bread.
These will "forever" be malformed unless I can figure out a way to corral their shape on the peel. I looked into the baguette baking trays, but they are all perforated, and slack doughs will begin to adhere to the perforations. No thanks.
Yesterday baked my standard ciabatta - 100% hydration AP levain, 76% water, the 3% oil brings in another 3% hydration. With all of the water based manipulation and bowl scraping while mixing the dough, I'll add another 1% to the overall hydration now at 80%. I discovered a while back that I would rather eliminate the oil and add the extra 3% hydration to the water. But this time I didn't, and the oil was included.
Still a great bread either way, but I don't think it is any better with the oil than without. Delivered the big loaf to our same neighbors along with some pecan tassies that my wife baked yesterday. We shared them over a Zoom dinner last night.
Alan, “I looked into the baguette baking trays, but they are all perforated, and slack doughs will begin to adhere to the perforations.”
what do you think about placing parchment paper on the baguette trays, then adding your dough. OR, putting the dough on the parchment then transferring to the tray.
YES/NO?
but parchment paper is somewhat stiff and I can't imagine it conforming to the tray curvature easily with the limited amount of weight the dough would exert. Also, I suppose that the purpose of the perforations are to allow heat transfer, something that the parchment is already interrupting across the entire tray and not just the perforations themselves.
And I'm not gonna invest in any terra-cotta barrel roof tiles either! (although it did occur to me...)
I have one that fits 2 loaves and when I’ve used for baguettes in the past I would use baking spray and they worked pretty good. I will have to try with he ciabatta next time and see if it works or makes a mess.
“... but think I came across an "interesting" feature, at least in my bakes. The loaves that came out with some height typically did not exhibit as much of an open crumb as those that baked flatter.“ This may be particularly true because of the super high hydration.
That makes me think. Up front I’d think big oven spring, bit holes. But then sandwich bread comes to mind - big oven spring, small holes.
Considering cell size (open crumb) -
I wonder if the wetter dough isn’t weaker, thus producing more thin and delicate cell walls. The thin cell walls may be able to expand easier and/or coalesce more so that stronger cell walls.
Considering oven spring (height of baked bread) -
If any of the above holds water, maybe the weaker (wetter) dough is unable to rise as high because the cells coalesce during expansion and hinder the rise.
Throwing these thoughts out for discussion...
to be the case for wetter doughs. Being less stiff and more fluid and able to then stretch and expand in the oven. A thinner dough will react to the heat of the stone more than a thick one. I think that pushing the fermentation further than normal with ciabatta is one of the key elements to the signature crumb.
These look great. Love the pecan tassies as those are my favorites!
but in these days of drumming our fingers at home a little too often, my wife came across them. Really tasty, which is funny for me as I don't like pecan pie.
I used the remaining dough, which is a little like rugelach dough, to roll out, then paint with the goopy stuff, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, golden raisins and toasted walnut pieces. Then rolled up, cut and baked. I like that even better!
Good thing you don't live in NY anymore or I'd be knocking on your door!
I wear a mask when I answer the doorbell or step outside my apartment. Can't quite remember why anymore...
ahead of me on the trail going up Hydration Mountain and already on the way back down. Did you plant the flag at the summit? "Because it's there" if anyone asks why. I am determined to break the glass ceiling since it seems to be a thang lately. When do you add the sugar?
3 or more hour pure refrigerated autolyse. Mixing bowl: incorporate - levain, IDY, sugar, salt. With mixer: small pieces of autolyse to incorporate. then bassinage, finally oil.
I'm more like an aging Billy Goat clinging to the side of Hydration Mountain, nibbling on the wild flowers and hoping an Eagle doesn't buzz me and knock me off my footing.
Unfortunately I had it backward and flagged a plant at the summit. Dang!
I just noticed that Little Stevie gave the Rascals induction speech for the R&R HoF. I'm a bit slow on the uptake...
Rock and Roll. I saw that too and realized the Sivio character he played wasn't much of a stretch for him.
I may skip the levined glass and count on IDY. I was thinking along the lines of the Giorilli framework but adding sugar, more oil and all the water it could take. Now that we are making water flow uphill. This sounds like a job for High gluten flour.
wow.. I've been away for 2 weeks and missed the start of this. Ciabatta was what got me into baking to start with and i've had some successes with a yeasted (poolish) ciabatta. looking forward to success in a sourdough version.
very creamy soft crumb
Nice looking slice there, James. What formula are you using? The color and look of the crumb texture looks super nice. Your crust reminds me of the “leoparding” on a good Neapolitan Pizza.
Those babies sire did blow up in the oven...
what flour did you use?
This is based on Reinhart's Poolish Ciabata recipe. it's CY with poolish and I use a 10% protein flour that's like AP on the stronger side. I use an addition of EVOO (added during stretch and folds) and adjust the hydration to the flour (on the lower range of Reinhart's recipe). Overnight poolish. mix final in KA mixer for a few minutes. 3 stretch and folds. final rest for about and hour. These here were baked in a over the grill stone oven (BakerStone) at about 700F. Thus the leopard spots. I get good results in oven with baking stone without the leopard spots.
I actually have to flatten the dough quite a bit before they go into the oven so they don't get too round and tall. the dough is definitely a very delicate "bag of bubbles".
I think there are a lot of interpretations of what ciabatta is or should be. In my versions, i look for a thin crispy crust (not an excess of flour on the outside). a creamy crumb that is light gelatinized flour exploded. No, they dont have a traditional slipper shape with the letter fold apparent. no, there are no lines of folded flour dusting on the outside. Mine is not a traditional rustic version. but it does have the very high hydration component and a crumb that is reminiscent of the traditional ciabatta.
Few things that i remind myself on each bake for ciabatta are:
1) don't over develop the gluten, it's rise too puffy, be too chewy and too tall. 2) make sure to flip the loaf for the bake otherwise the air bubbles will all go to the top. and 3) a properly proofed loaf will always bounce back, don't be afraid to flatten it. it will puff up like a pita bread (with the proper internal structure of a ciabatta, of course)
I'll have a go at this soon and document. i have not baked one of these in over a year.
James
James those look great, you’ve lived up to your handle here. Interesting that you don’t over develop the gluten, it seems that most are fully developing the gluten. Very impressive ciabattas you’ve baked.
Benny
and am interested in the low gluten development process for ciabatta. The first recipe I ever tried was Reinhart's Poolish Ciabata recipe and had decent luck with it. I'm a biga man now that I have acquired the Giorilli version. I wonder if anyone has ever deep fried ciabatta dough?
If this CB is like the last one then we are just breaking ground here and there is plenty left for you to build on.
Thank MT. I dont know i would say mine was "low" gluten. I should have clarified.. I used an AP flour, so the gluten development would be limited. I do manage to get window pane developed after my 3rd stretch and fold. I know that i have taken it further with up to 6 folds. and i think i preferred it more with just 3.
On biga vs poolish.. i think i'm just lazy as biga needs more work to mix into the final dough evenly. What's the advantage of biga over poolish? is it flavor or texture?
The aroma and taste produced by the biga seems more authentic to me. The method of making the biga that Ilya linked a video to is the key. Granted a little more care is required to work the biga into a smooth dough. I use AP flour and a Bosch mixer for making ciabatta. It does a much better job of incorporating the extra water than my old Kitchen Aide. The process is explained more in this post.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54556/90-biga-loaf-italian-method
And as we've seen endlessly in this CB and elsewhere, one size does not fit all. Great crumb.
I suppose if Sig. Giorilli and his clan were to review the CB, they'd have their faces turned away in horror of what's become of their beautiful ciabatta breads, and how sacrilegious can we get. We may try his and others' methods and looks, but ultimately once we make these, their look, feel and taste no longer belong to anyone but ourselves. Without change we'd all still be driving black cars that look like horse-drawn carriages.
It will be like watching Mr Baseball step up to the plate. Welcome, It's a tough crowd!
i'm feeling a lot of pressure here...
dup removed
Is what I tell my buddies when I'm in a crappy mood. Thats how ciabatta makes me feel. Its wonderful as a pizza crust but as far as a loaf goes it takes a lot of mental effort to find the the will to bake one of these ...
Just made some nice neopolitano pizza for my teens just now and fortunately I did find just enough motivation to turn one of the portions into this. Flavor is ok. Better than a loaf of wonderbread.
For all my CB Ciabatta bakes, see http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66311/community-bake-ciabatta
Have I got ciabattas for you!
Well-well. Didn't expect that, but I finally produced ciabattas! The bake that I mostly winged without much planning, and hey-ho, the best result by far.
I basically followed my previous bake almost exactly, except I omitted the oil, and maintained the originally planned weight of 800g total. Formula here: https://fgbc.dk/113c
The only major difference was the flour. I used Caputo Couco 00 flour, 13% protein, instead of my normal bread flour (12.3%).
Fermented the biga overnight (which must be approximately the right temperature), for ~13 hours. Then mixed the dough. Dissolving the biga and making the dough come together and develop the gluten was the messiest process of any bakes I've had. Using a hand mixer for the biga splattered half the kitchen with floury water, and trying to slap&fold this dough (even not at full hydration) created the stickiest pile of goo on my counter. In the end I figured out that Rubaud mixing was perfect for this dough, and it was all good. Then did 3 sets of stretch&folds spaced by 30 min, and then... I forgot about it! Hasn't happened before, but I got into the zone with some work, and just didn't realize how the time passed. In the end the bulk lasted around 6 hours (quite a lot of it was spent on the initial struggles to mix the dough properly). Surprisingly, the dough wasn't overflowing at all, it wasn't that hugely risen even. It was clearly jiggly and had some bubbles, but not as much as I expected after this length of time.
Anyway, I just roughly and gently divided and shaped the dough into two ciabattas, and proofed on a couche. And again it didn't seem like much was happening (I generally don't notice much change during proof time with any dough really, not sure what's going on), so I baked after 1.5 hrs final proof - 15 min with steam, 15 min without (and convection on for the last 5 min to gain some more colour).
And here is what I got - not very impressive, even a little split on top, but let's say I was going for rustic! And I did get some oven spring, which is a big improvement already.
[url=https://ibb.co/sjdn0Qb]
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What was more exciting was inside!
[url=https://ibb.co/XCFhmsG]
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[url=https://ibb.co/Lt89pgv]
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Finally I got quite an open crumb! The crust is still a little crispy this morning, and not too thick. Tastes great too. Perfect for horizontal slicing for sandwiches (which is what I had for breakfast, with Camembert and some Polish ham).
In spite of your travails. Hand mixing ciabatta is a frightening prospect for me. Maybe a frissage (fraisage)? would be less messy than making a slurry of the biga. I am happy for your success.
Thank you! I am starting to think the biga is not worth the effort without a dough mixer. Using a hand mixer lets me avoid the physical pain of hand mixing the biga into the dough, but difficult to avoid the splatter! Could you comment more, how I could try frissage for this? I've never tried it.
I am not sure but smearing the dough on the workbench with the heel of your hand is how the biga might be incorporated. I want to thank you for posting the video about making a proper biga. It has become my go to method and I plan on using it for my next pizza dough as well.
Thanks! That also sounds like a lot of work, and difficult to make sure everything is completely smooth... I was thinking another option to try might be a food processor, maybe adding water little by little and blitzing would dissolve the biga properly. But also possible it'll be just flying around and not doing anything. Need to try it.
Yeah, that video was a game changer! I think a few people here found it useful, and I just couldn't have figure out how to make such a low hydration mix without kneading - and, hence, gluten development, without seeing it.
I agree with Don, Ilya those look really good. Will you make these again with the biga?
Benny
Thanks Benny!
Maybe I'll try again, just to be sure it wasn't a random lucky fluke! And hopefully I'll avoid the problems I had this time.
The same recipe and method as before with the hydration increased to 84% and a half teaspoon of malt added back in. My best crumb so far and it was from the loaf that didn't bake a high as the other loaf. I could still see some small specks of the biga about the size of a BB in the final mix that didn't get smoothed out but they weren't noticeable in the bake and did not affect the outcome. I was able to stretch these to the length of my 20 inch stone but they shrank a few inches while baking. The dough was quite delicate and the pinched seam from dividing it is the reason for the tighter crumb on one edge. I am having a bit of struggle with the new way of inserting photos so any help would be appreciated.
Image
Glossy holes = Happy camper!
Just the right size to slice and still fit in a toaster and not too much bread to overwhelm the filling. And by the way, inspite of the large holes, No lap was sullied in the eating of this sandwich!
Incredible baking there Don. That is really open crumb and thin crust, the glossy crumb is beautiful.
Benny
" it was from the loaf that didn't bake a high as the other loaf." I wonder if this effect is similar to what I found with my recent bakes of the pan de cristal. The loaves that rose more had the smaller crumb. The flatter loaves were more open. And perhaps the same with my own ciabatta. As I get the barrel effect, the crumb is tighter, which I'm in no way unhappy with. But still exhibits all of the other qualities of a good ciabatta.
Beauty.
After reading about your experience with your previous bake I found the same thing happened in my case. You would expect the taller loaves to have larger holes but the opposite seems to be the case. The folding builds structure for a taller loaf but the completely undisturbed dough is flatter with a more open crumb.
This new way of inserting pictures is a mystery to me.
For pictures, I use an image hosting website which provides BBCode, for example this one, but there is a lot of them: https://imgbb.com/
Just upload images there and paste code here (beware sometimes the code it generates also contains an ad link in the end, which I then remove manually).
Hi Ilya,
Yes I find that site is pretty good. I've created an account and I can easily see all my uploads. I have also used cubeupload https://cubeupload.com/ but they seem to have downtime quite often.
I always resize images to eg 550 pixel wide prior to uploading to get them the right size.
Lance
Oh I never bothered to create an account, but sounds like it's useful, actually! Thanks!
pasting and editing code. So am I to understand that the images I want to post need to be pre-sized and come from a host site? I'm afraid Idaveindy needs to show up on my desktop like the paperclip in Word.
It's really simple.
Go to https://imgbb.com/.
Select, or just paste an image - or multiple images.
Click "Upload". You'll get something like this:
[url=https://ibb.co/jVx8T61]
[/url]
You need the code from the window on the bottom (I added a couple of spaces, so it wouldn't render as an image): [ url=https://ibb.co/Lz7TW6d][img] https://i.ibb.co/xSTn0Gq/IMG-20200119-163042.jpg[/img][/url]
That's just perfect! Light open crumb, crispy crust, all what is needed for a ciabatta.
I actually prefer a paper thin crust that is softer. The little bit of oil seems to provide that and they stay fresher longer.
To each their own - I would like it thin too, but still crispy. My last attempt was a touch too thick I think, but that's me being picky. But maybe next time I'll try with a little oil again.
I don't put oil into the dough during the mix. but i use it to lube the tub that i bulk in. Through the 3 stretch and folds, it keeps the dough from sticking and eventually gets incorporated. Seems to work well. i get a good shiny dough that has a thin crispy crust and a bit of the EVOO flavors throughout. Good with rosemary infused oil too.
Today I made a very presentable layout for my teens who are perpetually online and said 'hey guys ! look at this'. I then did hand-model presentation of each item and said Enjoy the Bounty.
My 15 year old then proceeded to get a frozen White Castle and headed directly to the microwave. oh joy
More for you...
Their loss I agree. That would be a very nice lunch but I can see teenagers turning their noses up at that. The ciabatta have a very nice crumb.
Benny
The community bake provided the excuse to bake a simple ciabatta recipe that a friend has been baking for years.
It is the exact opposite of my recent sourdough breads in almost every dimension: instant yeast, has no autolyse, uses sugar, is super rapid, no wholewheat, etc etc. Even for an instant recipe it is fairly minimalist eschewing the biga or couche or anything that would complicate the life of the home baker for whom the original recipe was intended.
Sometimes it is fun to try something radically different, and it reminded me of what was possible in bread baking.
The recipe then:
- Mixed as an all-in-one-mix; first mixed the dry ingredients (yeast, flour, sugar, salt) to ensure even distribution and then added the lukewarm water. Note: the original recipe calls for adding the salt after the dough was mixed, but went even minimalist than that with an all-in-one.
- Five minutes of stretch-and-fold (in-bowl) after mixing. More like an in bowl stretch and slap. After five minutes dough was still sticky, but there was some evidence of gluten formation and it was holding shape better. Original recipe says you can do machine mixing but should finish off by hand, and being minimalist again did everything by hand.
- Smothered top of dough in bowl with olive oil and let the oil run down the sides of the dough in the bowl. Coverred bowl and left until doubled in volume. This took around 1h 45min for me (RT of 23-24 deg C).
- Tipped out onto heavily floured surface and did a basic 'envelope' shaping. No couche. This is where I went a little wrong, should have gone directly onto the final tray rather than having to move it again and there was certainly some degassing and flatness caused by that.
- Baked at 200 deg C for 30-40 minutes until golden brown showed on top and base tap sounded good (took 35 min).
Since I was breaking all the rules we only waited 30 minutes for cooling before we tucked in with good butter which melted instantly. Soft crust, nice mouth feel, lovely salty taste. Certainly, a poor crumb compared to the true sourdough master pieces from the community bake, but for a low effort effort this was a surprisingly solid recipe.
That is a brave bake. Well done. By my calculation, this is 90% hydration dough that is way over my largest hydration attempts. Did the olive oil eventually get mixed into the dough or poured off?
Thanks for sharing,
Cheers,
Gavin.
Full process and photos here:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66463/my-basic-ciabatta
James
Lovely colour and shape!
Lance
Really well done, you live up to your name here James!
I like that color and the oven spring is quite impressive. I look forward to seeing your SD version.
The aim of today's attempt at Ciabatta bread will use Hamelman's 125% hydration liquid Levien, Vermont sourdough formula. The final dough hydration will be modified up a full ten percentage points to 75%. I think the liquid Levien will work well with the high hydration old slippers. (The traditional biga method notwithstanding) The plan is to bring the Levien up to room temperature for 1hr. then build the final dough. At that point, I will follow the same bulk/shape/retard procedure as with the baguettes. With any luck at all that should mean an 8 PM bake time.
Continuing to develop the salt-retard method: 83% all-purpose flour, 14% sprouted wheat, 3% whole wheat flour, 4% vital wheat gluten. Half of dough baked as ciabatta, half as pan loaf, 1kg dough each. Write-up here.
Hello everyone,
I would like to introduce myself to the group. I am a new member, I have baked bread at home for about two years. I have been working on my ciabattas in the past couple of months and decided to try the Giorilli formula (see earlier in this thread). I followed the formula to the letter, although I don't have the specific flour the recipe calls for, so I had to do it with plain old KA bread flour. The result was pretty nice, very soft and open crumb with a nice aroma. I have a couple of observations that I would like to share and discuss.
I don't have a mixer, so I hand-mixed the dough. Since the formula calls for real biga which is not a dough but more like crumbles, it was extremely difficult to fully mix the dough the next day, I couldn't quite do it 100% well, even though I first hydrated the biga with the water and kneaded it for a good 5 minutes, then added the remaining flour and kneaded again for at least 10 minutes quite aggressively. When I was doing stretch&folds during the bulk phase, I would still feel those tiny bits of unincorporated flour pieces with my hand. Luckily, they didn't show in the baked loaf. While I know that real biga is not supposed to be a dough, I wonder what would happen if I mixed it into a dough instead of crumbles. Would I get dramatically different results at the end in terms of taste and texture? I feel that if I mixed the biga better at the outset, creating an actual dough, it would be easier to incorporate it into the dough the next day.
I also suspect that this formula works better with mixers than with hand-mixing, for two reasons. First, because of the incorporation of the biga I said above. Secondly, the fermentation goes pretty quickly in this formula after everything is mixed, for the large (80%) amount of prefermented flour. Because of that, I think that the gluten needs to be fully developed right from the outset, before fermentation starts, otherwise we will have a lot of fermentation going soon after mixing without sufficient gluten development, and the structure will suffer. I find it quite impossible to fully develop the gluten at the outset in this formula by hand, because of the biga issue, and also because of the high water content. So, not having a mixer, I developed the gluten at the outset by hand as well as I could. It was not perfect, so I gave the dough 4 sets of stretch & folds at 20-minute intervals during the bulk phase. While the dough passed the windowpane test after the last fold, there was already so much fermentation going on that I thought I destroyed the small bubbles with the folds, which as a result merged into those enormous bubbles that made the crumb quite uneven. In my experience, developing gluten by hand via folds works better with ciabatta formulas that yield much slower fermentation because one has plenty of time to do the folds and fully develop the gluten before any fermentation takes place.
One more thought on the extremely large holes. Perhaps I should have docked the top of the dough with my fingers before baking. I have heard that docking is used to avoid excessive rise in the oven, but I wonder if it also works for evening out the crumb and braking those enormous bubbles into smaller ones. Any thoughts?
Peter
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The Ciabatta looks great! I do think that poking the dough with your fingers would have evened out the crumb a bit.
Considering you don’t have a mixer, you choose a difficult method. Hand mixing Ciabatta by hand is challenging using any formula and method. Next time you may find another formula more suited to hand mixing.
If you bake Ciabatta again, post the results. We are curious to watch your progress.
Very nice looking Ciabatta!
Danny
Thank you for your answer, Danny. You are right, it is difficult to deal with ciabatta dough without a mixer! However, I think it is possible when the dough develops slowly. A few days ago I made a ciabatta with a hybrid method, using only 0.05% ADY and 5% sourdough levain. The bulk took 15 hours at around 68 F, plus a 2-hour final proof. The dough obviously had enough time to develop the gluten just by itself, although I gave it 4-5 sets of folds in the first 90 minutes or so, then it passed the windowpane test. After that, I left it completely undisturbed for the rest of the bulk fermentation. This is how it turned out.
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Wow Peter, that ciabatta is perfection to me. Gorgeous super open crumb and lovely crust. That was hand and time developed gluten without machine mixing, remarkable.
Benny
Outstanding! Benny said it all.
Great looking bread.
I'm with Benny & Dan. This is outstanding, especially without a mixer.
I appreciate the comments. That was the only ciabatta I made so far that had such a crumb structure, so I am far from an expert. Hopefully I can reproduce the same results again. I can only suspect that it turned out the way it did because of the fully developed gluten due to the long undisturbed fermentation. I literally left it alone for like 13 hours, and no shaping, just cutting.
The ciabatta bread that is !
Hi all,
I made another ciabatta yesterday, this time instead of using 100% bread flour, I used a mix of 10% whole wheat and 90% bread flour. I need some help with the crumb.
This time, I shaped the ciabatta lightly by doing an letter fold, this gave it a nice cylindrical look, which I like. However, the holes in the crumb could be more thoroughly distributed. It had some really nice looking slices, but some other slices had large holes on top and a more dense center, even though I flipped it before putting it in the oven. First I thought I had over proofed it but it had an enormous oven spring, so I don't think that was the case. Also, after performing the last stretch&fold, I checked the gluten development, it passed windowpane, so I don't think that was the issue either. Should I have proofed it longer perhaps?
This is the formula I used:
90% KA bread flour
10% whole wheat
Overnight poolish with 50% prefermented flour
0.2 % instant yeast
15% active sourdough starter
83% hydration
2% salt
In the morning I hand-mixed all the remaining ingredients with the ripe poolish. Kneaded for about 10 minutes, until the dough was nice and smooth, all ingredients evenly incorporated. Then bulk fermented until doubled in size (3 hours), performing four sets of stretch&folds in the first hour. Then lightly shaped it, and final proofed it on a couche for 1.5 hours before baking.
Any ideas what could have caused the crumb to have large air pockets on top and a denser center, despite the fact that I flipped it, and the gluten development seemed fine, too?
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Very lovely ciabattas!
Thank you very much Mini Oven! :)
I decided to revisit Ciabattas, and make them using a sourdough poolish. I think many of my previous attempts were underfermented, so wanted to push it a bit this time - and omitted the olive oil for no specific reason, except oiled the container and hands a little. Made a large (~40% PFF) 100% hydration preferment with a small amount of refrigerated rye starter, and left overnight, for ~16 hours. Then mixed the final dough excluding salt and some water, mixed and left for ~30 min to avoid dealing with stickiness. Then mixed in the salt and remaining water (final hydration 80%, here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1h1b), did slap&folds (the dough got quite strong very quickly - I guess from the gluten developed in the poolish?), then did coil folds every ~30 min, and left for a total bulk ferment of around 4 hours at 26°C. The dough was lovely and supple. I then divided into 4 small-ish pieces, and loosely shaped them into tubes, like preshaping baguettes. Proofed on a couche seem side down, for around 3 hours. They clearly grew in size, and passed the poke test.
When transferring onto the peel, gently stretched them (basically, took them by the ends, and they stretched a little under their own weight), and then baked on a hot steel with steam for 13 min, and without steam with convection until done.
Outside they are a bit ugly, all of them got split! Did I shape them too tightly? Or why would this happen?..
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Cut the smallest one while still hot, to have with dinner. Inside, the crumb is really nice, not super open, but soft and at least certainly not underfermented :) Not better than the previous attempt I made, but not bad.
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I can’t answer your question as to why they split, but I do like their rustic appearance. Is there any chance that the seam ended up on top? It doesn’t sound like it from your description but that would be a reason for the splits.
Benny
Thanks Benny! Good idea, but I don't think the seem could have ended up on top, I proofed seem-down (never tried that before I think, actually!), and then just transferred onto the peel without flipping... So unless I was really serious confused at some point and didn't even notice that, the seems are below.
They look great Ilya and I like the idea of the sour poolish!
Do you think stretching them under their own weight caused the gluten to develop in evenly? In a sense, created some natural “weaker” spots?
Yeah, I liked the polish a lot, very easy to make, speeds up fermentation on the day a lot with a big inoculation. Develops the gluten by waiting, and a nice flavour boost too.
I don't think stretching caused weak spots, it seemed they were quite even and nice looking before baking... But maybe it stretched the skin and added to the surface tension?..
OK it's been a long time since I last tried ciabattas. To summarize my poor efforts to date, the first failed because of my starter sluggishness and the second failed because of severe sticking to the couche. This time I ensured that my starter was nice and active (as it has been consistently since switched to a diet of whole rye) and I also made sure I used a lot of flour on the couche. Now, I realize that my couche is a cotton couche and not flax linen. I was sent the wrong couche when I ordered it last year and I should have returned it, but at the time I was raring to go with baguettes and didn't bother. If you guys says that there is a huge difference between a cotton vs flax linen couche then I may go ahead and order one. The cotton has been fine for lower hydration baguettes but even this time the dough did stick. I was able to carefully pry them off the couche using a dough scraper but of course the dough was still degassed more than I would have wished.
I made the Scott McGee ciabattas that Alan was kind enough to share with me. I no longer use my stand mixer for dough at all only wanting to hand mix, this is because it is making clicking noises which I'm sure indicate that the gears are going. Thus, I did not want to use a formula with a low hydration Biga which is more difficult to dissolve or add to the dough. I made these without any IDY.
These are baked darker than I would have preferred but I have to admit that I lost track of time as these were baking while I was making dinner.
I’ll post the crumb tomorrow when I slice them to have for lunch. They did have good oven spring despite the degassing so I’m hopeful that the crumb will be alright. 🤞
and I do adore the darker bake. It is a really nice formula. As you might recall, I also played around with an 80% PFF biga at 66% hydration and the final mix comes together much more rapidly (in my old KA mixer). And I like your barrel shaping, one after my own heart.
Looking forward to the crumb, which doesn't have to be so open as to allow mice or small children to slip through. My idea of ideal ciabatta is a crusty crust and an open soft silky crumb. So let's see where yours goes..
Alan.
Darn, I’m going to have to get a proper flax linen couche I think or use rice flour next time with my cotton couche. I think that the tears in the gluten matrix in the upper half of the crumb are secondary to my peeling the dough off the couche since it was stuck. I don’t think they were overproofed although that could explain the stickiness. But the crumb in the lower half of the dough doesn’t look overproofed to me, but I could be wrong. Anyhow, no luck with number three, they will have to be a number four or more until I get this right.
Addendum. Thinking about the dense center of the ciabatta, I think I know what happened. After bulk the dough was cold retarded overnight. The next day it was divided then shaped and left at room temperature to final proof. Unlike much slimmer baguettes, the inside of these ciabatta would take longer to warm than the inside of the baguettes, so I suspect that when I did the poke test for proof I only really tested the outside which looked well proofed while the innermost dough hadn’t had enough time to complete proofing so was underfermented relatively speaking. I might skip the cold retard next time, I don’t think I needed to cold retard to shape and I don’t require a more sour flavour from my ciabattas.
Finally I have ordered a flax linen couche and hope that my next set of ciabattas won’t suffer the same sticking issues, fingers crossed.
Benny
I think ciabattas have been my kryptonite LOL. Mostly the problem has been dough sticking to the couche. I now have a 100% flax linen couche. I used it once previously after seasoning it by rubbing flour into it and then baking baguettes and there was no sticking. With that experience it was time to bake ciabattas again. Using the same recipe but trying out Alan’s shaping as per his youtube video. I needed a bit more flour on the counter but other than that the shaping went well. Oh I did change a couple of things, no IDY was used and I decided to use a 76% hydration starter to match the hydration of the dough. I should have stretched the dough more during transfer from the couche to the peel.
A beautiful crumb, and the consistency of the two relative to each other is noteworthy. A little tougher to do when dealing with amorphous shapes. If all you want is to cut single round slices to serve, the roundness of the barrel came out ideal. I find it more attractive than a ciabatta that is relatively flat. That would also make it a really nice husky size for toasting and for bruschetta.
The stretching trick, not mine but Scott MeGee's, is to find that happy medium for a long stretch (if that's the plan) yet avoid manhandling and perhaps degassing the dough. A way to avoid more flour on the counter would be to use a thin coating of water as the medium between the dough and the counter. As we are dealing with an already very wet dough, the additional water shouldn't make much difference if some adheres to the outer surface. You'll still have to flour the couche, but perhaps you can get away with not quite so much raw flour on the dough as you might otherwise find.
I wish that he had more videos available, as I like his manipulation of the dough across the breadth of his activities.
Another in along line of bravos!
Alan
I actually quite like your method of shaping Alan, it skips the preshape and I think, allows a more open crumb. Given my plan to have one of these for dinner to make sandwiches, I should have stretched much longer. The bread had such oven spring that we could barely get the sandwiches in our mouths to eat.
I’ll have to try a non shaping bake at some point, I see so many bakers basically divid, then transfer to the couche after heavily flouring any sticky surfaces, rest, transfer then bake. I’m curious to see what the crumb would be like doing that.
Thanks again for sharing your recipe and the video you posted on YouTube.
Benny
blush with those slippers!
Got anything against olives?
"Tis the season to be olly..... Fa la la la la, La la la la."
:)