This is in reference to Chef Reinhart's Ciabatta with Biga.  I think what helped me was to re-read the directions time and time again. And to watch different videos. I feel it was successful...thank you Chef.

I'm a novice ciabatta bread baker. I don't understand why sometimes air holes are small and other times they are quite large, and evenly distributed. I prefer the larger holes. I think I'm doing everything the same way, but I keep getting varying results. I do start with a starter, and I mix the dough with the paddle attachment until the dough creeps up the paddle. Then I switch to a dough hook and mix until it clears the sides, which takes about 7 minutes or so. I use bread flour too. The bread, whether the holes are large or small, always tastes delicious, which is the most important thing, I guess. :) 

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. 

This is from Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking.  Wonderful flavor, glossy sheen to the crumb and slightly chewy, can't wait to make it again.  The only issue I had was that the large holes were clustered just under the top crust, rather than being more or less evenly distributed throughout the crumb.  And the crumb in the bottom half of the loaf was more dense, with no large holes.  Anyone know how I might improve upon that?

My thoughts focused on either more aggressive dimpling, or on proofing less.  It's a yeast-leavened dough with a 24hr biga and a touch of whole rye and whole wheat.  My biga was supposed to triple in 24 hrs but only reached 2.5x by 28 hrs, by which time I went ahead with the recipe.

Just made my first loaves of ciabatta bread this afternoon and was very very pleased with everything.  One thing I noted is that most of the larger holes that make the crumb typical of ciabatta almost all ended up at the top of the loaf, while the smaller holes all ended up at the bottom.  I'm wondering if this is just not enough folding before the final proof before baking, or there is something else going on.   Any help is greatly appreciated. thanks

Hi Guys,

I am the only baker for a cafe, and in the last few months we've begun making our own ciabatta for sandwiches. 

 So far, i've been mixing an 80% hydration dough. I mesure out the water then mix in the leaven and then add the flour into a big bowl. It weighs about 2olbs all together.

We don't have a mixer and I've been finding that mixing the dough by hand is creating a lot of lumps of flour that i'm having trouble getting rid of. I end up having to cut out the bigger lumps when I shape the bread into sandwich squares. 

Does anyone have any advice or strategies for making large batches by hand?

Ideally i'd like to mix a 40lb batch all at once (instead of doing two 20lb batches), but i'm having a bit of trouble handling that much dough in a small kitchen.

Any other ideas about increasing efficiency in any part of the breadmaking process would be appreciated as well.

Thanks a ton!

Reinhardts Ciabatta

Ciabatta- 3 small loaves or 2 large

3 1/4 cups of Mature Poolish ready for final dough

3  cups of bread flour

1 3/4 tsps of salt

1 1/2 tsp of instant yeast

6 tab to 3/4 cup of water room temp

In mixing bowl add poolish with all of the ingredients.  Blend well til flour is hydrated well. Continue to mix for 5 minutes with paddle, til dough comes away from the sides.  This is very sticky dough, if it isn’t you need more water.  They suggest starting with 6 tab and up to 3/4 cup of water.  I used it all.

Prepare counter top with flour, add dough on top and pat down with floured hands. Let rest 2 minutes and then proceed to stretch and fold procedure. Then cover for 30 minutes and repeat process.  Then cover again and proof for 1 and half hours to 2 .   Then proceed to cut into 2 pieces and place in a couche. Proof for 60 minutes then bake in preheated oven with steam at 500 and then turn down after 30 seconds. Bake for another 15 minutes.

I have been making the ciabatta recipe from this site with eggs and milk, which I suppose means that it's not ciabatta any longer :)

I'm going to have a dinner guest who's allergic to cow's milk, so I made these boules with coconut milk. Threw in a little raw sugar for oomph. Came out great!

 I think I should be scoring more deeply.

Thanks to my new roommate, who let me use his camera to make some food porn.

I've been away from The Fresh Loaf for a while. I was still baking and blogging but didn't quite have time to also update the pages here. So, I'll keep it short and sweet for few things that I baked in the past week or two. 

Ciabatta with wheat germs and olive oil (from Hamelman's Bread)

The recipe produced great tasting and chewy ciabatta. I followed the shaping method from Susan @ Wild Yeast, by not degasing the dough. This worked really well. The bread was great with potato soup with sage burnt butter.

Full post is here > http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com/2011/07/ciabatta-with-toasted-wheat-germ-and.html

Focaccia with Rosemary and Tarragon herb oil

The recipe came from Peter Reinhart's American Pie cookbook. The recipe is quite similar to Reinhart's pizza dough. The herb oil contributed to great tasting focaccia. 

Full post is here > http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com/2011/07/focaccia-with-rosemary-and-tarragon.html

Wheaty Sourdough with bulgur, wheat berries and wheat germs

It had nice texture and crunch from wheat berries, moisture and flavour from bulgur and aroma and chewiness from wheat germ. I also included a small amount of honey to bring out more wheat flavours. 

Full post is here> http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com/2011/07/wheaty-sourdough-with-cracked-wheat.html

Sue

http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com

A collection of my recent bakes:

Poolish Baguettes

Cut for BLT's

Ciabatta (Craig Ponsford formula)

Somewhat disappointing crumb.  Another batch made the following week looked similar

Miche, shaped as a large batard.

With baby for (largely uninformative) scale

Crumb

More Ponsford Ciabatta, made without the final letter fold "shaping"

Crumb, still disappointing

Happy baking, everyone,

-Ryan 

Despite failing to post about it, I'm still at my quest for a perfect, hole-y ciabatta.  The last two weeks were interesting, to say the least.  

If you recall, two weeks ago I baked Craig Ponsford's ciabatta (a la Maggie Glezer), with results that were just about perfect.  Last week I tried to replicate the experience.  First, the formula and proceedure:

Biga:

• 300g King Arthur AP flour (the original calls for 200g Bread Flour and 100g AP) - 91%
• 15g Whole Rye Flour - 4.5%
• 15g Whole Wheat Flour - 4.5%
• 185g Water - 56%
• 0.016g Instant Yeast - 0.005%* 

*(originals calls for mixing 1/2 tsp yeast with 1 cup water, then measuring 1/2 tsp yeast-water into the biga. I have a scale with 0.01g graduations, and just measured 0.02g. )

Final Dough

• 325g King Arthur AP flour
• 342g Water
• 12g Salt
• 1.55g Instant yeast (1/2 tsp)
• Biga (All)

1. Mix biga ingredients together until smooth.  Biga will be quite stiff.  
2. Allow to ferment for 24 hours, or until tripled (Two weeks ago I didn't keep track, last week I only waited for a little more than double, possible a mistake).
3. Combine all final dough ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Mix with the hook for 5 minutes.  Dough will be very gloopy.
4. I gave it 30 stretch and folds in the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Not sure if this had any effect--I'll probably skip in in the future.
5. Ferment 3 hours.  At 20, 40, 60 and 80 minutes, dump the dough out onto a well floured work surface to stretch and fold.
6. Divide the dough in half, making two oblong shapes.  Fold each oblong in thirds, letter style (this will produce something vaguely square).  Gently stretch each dough piece into an oblong, and place on a well floured couche (I omitted the stretch last week--I think this was a mistake), seam side down.  Yes, down.  Cover with plastic, but try to keep the plastic off the surface of the dough.
7. Proof 45 minutes.  Meanwhile, preheat oven to 500 degrees (or with my POS oven, 535)
8. With wet fingers, make small dimples all over the exposed surface of the dough.
9. Flip the loaves onto parchment on a sheet pan or peel.  Slide the loaves into the oven, turn temperature down to 450 and bake for 35 minutes, using your favorite steaming method for the first 15.
10. Crack the oven door, turn off the oven, and wait 5-10 minutes more before removing the loaves to a cooling rack.

First Fold, Before and After

Second Fold, Before and After

Third Fold, Before and After

Last Fold, Before and After

Ready to divide and proof:

Dimpling

Exterior:

Crumb:

This bake was...puzzling.  As you can see, these loaves were awfully tall for ciabatta.  The crumb was tighter than the previous week, more akin to a batard.  The flavor profile was a bit difference as well--the sour and whole-grain notes were stronger, while the poolease-y flavor (what I think of as pain a l'ancienne flavor) was more muted.  Indeed, if I'd stuck a couple of sourdough batards into my oven, and pulled these out, I'd have been neither surprised nor displeased in the least.  Since I in fact loaded a pair of conventionally leavened ciabatta...well, color me puzzled.  

Cut ahead to today.  I had intended to take another stab at the Ponsford recipe, but a number of circumstances prevented me from putting together a biga in time.  That 24 hour fermentation time is tricky to work around.  I did have time for a poolish, so instead I took another stab at SteveB's Double Hydration Ciabatta, with some modifications inspired by the Ponsford Ciabatta.  It went like this:

Poolish:

• 190g KAF AP flour
• 190 Water
• 0.36g Instant Yeast (1/8tsp)

Final Dough

• 310g Flour
• 190g Water
• 15g Olive Oil
• 10g Salt
• 0.36g Instant Yeast (1/8tsp)

1. Mix poolish, ferment 12 hours.
2. Whisk poolish with 150g water and oil.
3. Add 30g flour and whisk vigorously until slightly frothy.
4. Add remaining flour and mix with a wooden spoon until smooth.  Autolyze 30 minutes
5. Sprinkle salt, yeast and remaining 40g water over dough.  Mix by hand until smooth (I started with the wooden spoon until the water was incorporated, then did about 60 stretch-and-folds with a spatula).
6. Proceed as in the Ponsford recipe from step 5, except omit the 3rd fold, and the letter-fold after dividing.

The results:

Curiouser and curiouser!  Excellent crumb this time, much better than my two previous tries.  The dough seemed much stronger than on my previous two attempts, and I think the crumb is a result of that.   The dimpling technique may be a factor as well, hard to say.  Also rather tall for ciabatta, although not as ridiculous as last week.  Crust was nicely crispy.  Flavor was clean, sweet and creamy.  I think I liked the Ponsford ciabatta's flavor more, but it would be somewhat deceptive to say that one was "better" than the other, because they're really very different.  

Proposition: An open crumbed ciabatta requires a strong dough.  Getting a wet dough like ciabatta to be strong is the trick, but multiple stretch-and-folds will do it.  

Happy baking, everyone.

-Ryan