Asiago Ciabatta

Cheese Ciabatta Ready to Bake

Cheese Ciabatta Baking in Oven

Cheese Ciabatta Out of Oven

Cheese Ciabatta: View of Crumb

Here is the recipe from King Arthur Flour:

This is my 1st attempt at Overnight Ciabatta:

Ciabatta Proofing

Ciabatta Ready for Baking

Ciabatta Baking

Ciabatta Crumb

Ciabatta Served

I used a large half sheet non stick jelly roll pan as the baking vessel.  I placed a silicone Silpat mat that fits the pan in the pan.  My Ciabattas were rising in a cloche.  When they had risen I used a dusted board to transfer them carefully to the Silpat mat. I chose this manner of baking because I have a small oven and I wanted to bake all 3 Ciabattas at the same time on the same rack in the oven.  I placed a baking stone in the oven and heated it to 500ºF along with a tray of water in bottom of the oven.  I added more water when I placed Ciabatta in the oven.  I removed the water tray after 8 minutes.  I rotated the bread halfway through baking process since the back of the oven is the hottest zone and I wanted more even baking.

I've been making no knead breads and started using that method for ciabatta. I do however like adding non fat dry milk powder to my ciabatta dough. Can I add this when mixing, and keep it out 18 hours? Some recipes for ciabatta are 2 steps, adding other ingredients on day 2 and mixing. I want to avoid the second stage of using a mixer.

Rob

I was getting antsy because I hadn't used my sourdough starter for 2 weeks! That's a long time for me. I needed use it. Well, I used it for ciabatta as you can see here and for Poliane's Miche.  The sourdough ciabatta that I baked the night before was enough to make my Sunday... Almost 80% hydration, following BBA's poolish version and replacing the poolish with my lively sourdough starter. I had fun making this one and I am beginning to believe that I get better results when I use the sourdough starter compared to commercial yeast. This ciabatta turned out pretty good. Very light as I hoped... the crumb was just lovely. Creamy and light flavor (not too yeasty or sour). It was very much liked by the family members and one loaf was gone during breakfast, as you can see with a simple fennel-mint salad. I gotta try making this ciabatta in our wood-fired oven and see how that turns out. Hope you like the photos. I tried to use natural light as much as I can...

Happy Bakes!

Hazim

I've not posted much, but I've still been baking, and I think my re-engagement with this site has encouraged me to try a few new things. Most recently, I made a variant of Jeffrey Hammelman's excellent Flaxseed Bread, which contains 60% rye. I've altered his recipe a bit, using whole rye instead of medium rye, increasing the hydration to 80% (to account for the extra absorbtion of whole rye) and used a rye starter at 100%, simply because that's how I keep mine. The recipe may be found in the handbook here.

Usually, I just let the sourdough do its thing, and don't add any commercial yeast. But, I was under some time pressure here, so I went ahead and added 3/4 tsp of instant yeast like Hammelman. Wow! I couldn't tell any difference in flavor, which was hearty with a good tang, but I got quite a bit more volume. As for the rise, Hammelman calls for 80 degrees. Well, it was about 64 in my house, so I just threw a cup of boiling water in the bottom of a cooler, stood the dough on an upturned bowl and closed it up. The bulk rise took about 45 minutes and the final rise was just over an hour (I intended to go just one hour, but got stuck on a conference call, as I work from home -- augggggh!).

Here's a picture. As you can see, I sprinkled sesame seeds on the top right after shaping.

Earlier in the week, I decided to give the Sullivan Street Potato Pizza from Glazer's Artisan Baking Across America a shot. You think you've worked with a wet dough? Trust me, until you've made the dough for the crust in this recipe, you've not worked with wet dough. The hydration on this puppy is something like 104%! It's a batter, and since I don't own a stand mixer (the recipe says to leave it in the mixer for 20 minutes) I went the food processor route, a la Peter Reinhart, and let it churn away for 45 seconds.

Did it work? I've no idea. But the dough (if you want to call it that) was smooth, and I was able to spread it over the pan.

It was a good potato pizza, but a little too starchy for my taste what with bread and potatoes together. Not sure I'll make it again.

I also decided to give Ponsford's Ciabatta from this same book another go, which has previously given me fits. As usual, probably because my house is so cold (below 60 at night sometimes) it took about 36 hours instead of 24 for the biga to develop. But this time around, I actually got a decent loaf of bread. Truth be told, though, I thought the poolish ciabattas I've made before tasted better. I don't see much advantage in using so little yeast (1/4 tsp of yeast is disolved into a cup of water -- then 1/2 tsp of that water is used to leaven the biga!) for the home baker, though I can see how it would be a big advantage for a professional baker to be able to let it ripen 24 hours.

Finally, I made a couple of Colombia batards, also from Glazer's book. MountainDog turned me on to this bread, for which I'm very grateful. Clearly, as bulbous as these loaves are, I should have let them proof another 30-60 minutes, but odd-looking bread for dinner is better than day-old bread the next day (well, most of the time). They tasted lovely, as always.

And the innerds, which, had I waited another 45 minutes, would have likely been more open. But, alas, the soup would have had no accompaniment.

For those interested in the double flour addition mixing technique, its application in the production of ciabatta can be found here:

http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=162

SteveB

I posted last week a question about real Italian ciabatta vs. American version of ciabatta and I received some good responses. My question was about achieving the texture on my ciabatta that I remembered the ciabatta I had in Italy having. The crust of my ciabatta is picture perfect and I'm able to achieve the large holes which I wanted. I used Peter Reinharts formula which by the way is excellent but here is the rub. The crumb always turns out "crumbly".not chewy. NOW-here is the question. I took a loaf last night and placed it in the microwave to warm it up while I finished off the ragu. I put it on 2mins. and a few minutes later I reheated it again for 2mins. When I pulled it out to cut it, it was perfect. The crust was chewy and crunchy; the inner texture was chewy just like the Italian versions I would get in Italy. Someone tell me what happened. Why did the microwave change the inner texture from crumbly to chewy and why did the crust turn out crisp, chewy and crunchy? Why the microwave? The science please! 

Okay, someone please tell me how to get true, authentic Italian ciabatta? I lived in Naples Italy for a year and I fell in love with the breads of the region. I make a very respectable using Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Bakers Apprentice" recipe. The crust and color are picture perfect. The crumb is full of holes just like the picture but..........the texture is really lacking to what I remember. In Italy, we would buy day old bread because it seemed to have much more flavor and the texture would soak up all the great ragu's my mother in law would make. Here is the rub, mine(and other's from artisan and professional bakers here) do not come close to what I remember. My texture turns to crumbs(crumbly) after about a day despite trying everything(from more or less oil, to changing my flour(even artisan flour from "King Arthur's), to times for proofing and temps for baking). What is the secret? I'm driving myself NUTS! Somebody help!

Rustic baguettes and ciabatta from Gosselin's formula (as described by Peter Reinhart)

Pain à l'Ancienne baguette crumb

I made these baguettes and ciabatta from the formula Reinhart says he got directly from Phillipe Gosselin. The version in "Bread Baker's Apprentice" is a modification.

This is a very high hydration dough (about 80%), and I made my dough with KAF's "French Style Flour," which is their T55 clone. This is a low-gluten flour, by American standards. The dough started out like a batter once the additional water was added. I mixed it in my Bosch Universal Plus for something like 15 minutes before it was smooth and shiney. It still flowed like a batter. For the next hour, I did Hamelman's folding in the bowl. It then doubled over the next 90 minutes. (This technique was improvised. I thought about chucking the whole project as a lost cause at several points, but I'm glad I didn't. I learned a lot.)

The loaves were divided and stretched onto semolina-dusted parchment. The baguettes were baked without further proofing. The Ciabatti were folded in the usual manner and allowed to rise for about 30 minutes before baking.

Note: No attempt was made to score these loaves.

The baguettes had the sweet taste and cool, silky mouth-feel of ciabatta. I count them a success. Whew!

David

Hello all. I started baking bread for the first time last year when I got ABI5MAD for the holidays. I worked on that for a good chunk of the year and finally started wanting to branch out into more traditional recipes. I have made several different recipes for bagels, including Hamelmans, PRs, and I have to admit, my NY grandfathers recipe is the best, dense chewy etc. I also recently made the buttermilk clusters from this site. Which turned out great. So now I have been wanting to experiment with more traditional recipes. I decided to make some ciabatta. I made Jason's Quick Ciabatta which I found at this site and the next day I made the Poolish version of PRs ciabatta from BBA. Without a doubt, Jason's version came out better. Better, crumb structure, moist and shiny irregular holes. PRs version tasted fine, but had a dense crumb, almost like a flat, softer crusted french bread. I followed the recipes exactly, weighed my ingredients, and as far as I can tell, handled the doughs similarly. Jason's version is a higher hydration, and was a much more slack dough, a bit difficult to work with, but worth it. I actually added a few extra TBS of water to the PR version to loosen it up.

Any thoughts on what I could be doing wrong with the PR version? Over ferment? Under ferment. As I mentioned I am fairly new to artisan breads and I don't have the best understanding of the science yet, but I am excited to learn.

Thanks for the site, and all of the knowledge that is shared here. It is indispensible to a new baker.

Jason's Quick Ciabatta

Poolish Ciabatta from PR's BBA

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ethan

http://brakeforbread.blogspot.com