The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Jason's Quick Ciabatta au levain

Pablo's picture
Pablo

Jason's Quick Ciabatta au levain

I've been making Jason's Quick Ciabatta lately and decided to try it with a wild yeast starter instead of the commercial yeast.  Except for a greatly prolonged initial rising, it performed much like the yeasted variety.  Instead of the 2 teaspoons of commercial yeast I used 200 g of active starter at 100% hydration, to which I added 480g of water and 500g of white flour and 12g of salt.  The "beat the hell out of it" stage may have taken a couple of minutes longer, but it was basically the same.  During the initial fermenting I boosted the temperature in the Proofinator 5000 (my proofing box) to 90 degrees and it took about 6 hours to tripple.  It was a little stickier to handle but not much and I'd been making the yeasted variety lately so my wet dough handling skills were up to it, also it didn't spring quite as much as the yeasted variety in the oven, but plenty for me and I prefer the taste from the wild yeast preferment.

 

An experiment that worked!

:-Paul

pmccool's picture
pmccool

And I expect that the flavor was lovely, too.

Paul

Trishinomaha's picture
Trishinomaha

What beautiful bread! I tried Jason's Ciabatta when he first posted it but was not up to handling such wet dough at the time so I was kind of intimidated. I thinking I should give this recipe another go.

Trish

Pablo's picture
Pablo

I found this video very helpful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v24OBsYsR-A

:-Paul

Frequent Flyer's picture
Frequent Flyer

I've been wanting to use a sourdough starter with that recipe.  I make the yeasted version fairly often.

alabubba's picture
alabubba

The yeasted version is a regular in my rotation as well. I think I will feed my starter and make a batch of this this weekend.

Thanks for the kick in the pants to try this Au Levain

allan

Davidkatz's picture
Davidkatz

The regular recipie has been a big hit around here....

Thanks for the starter tip...gotta try it next.

 

David