Ciabatta

Submitted by chuppy on August 24, 2009 - 5:51am

This weekend I made a Ciabatta from the Rhienharts, BBA. I followed the instructions to the "T" and to no avail I had very small holes, but a great flavor. The poolish was good and weighed in at the correct 23 oz. But a few minutes into mixing and the dough was too dry! I added more water than the recipe called for and finally started to see a hydrated product. I'm sure the hydration was the problem.

Any Ideas what may have happened up to this point? I'm a huge fan of hearth breads and would really like to accomplish the art of making the "Italian Bread Slipper."

Thanks for ant advice you may offer.

Chuppy

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Submitted by ClimbHi on August 24, 2009 - 6:04am.

Do a search . . .

In this forum. This recipe has been discussed before and I seem to recall that the consensus was that there is an error in the formula in the book -- not enough water.

ClimbHi
Pittsburhg, PA

Submitted by chuppy on August 24, 2009 - 12:16pm.

ClimbHi, That's great news. I

ClimbHi,

That's great news. I thought I did something really wrong. One only knows how many times I've slipped up a recipe and used tsp instead of tbs or something like that.

Chuppy

Submitted by PeterPiper on August 25, 2009 - 4:45pm.

Me too

Hi Chuppy,

I made this ciabatta this weekend and had the same issue - great flavor but dense structure. See here

http://psoutowood.vox.com/library/post/supa-sunday.html

I have been making the Team USA ciabatta in the BBA for a while and have had much better results from that. See what I get for straying from a tried and true recipe!

-Peter

Submitted by chuppy on August 27, 2009 - 4:46am.

Peter, My family requested

Peter,

My family requested that I make the bba ciabatta again regardless of the tight crumb. The flavor is good, but the challenge of the ciabatta is to get the large holes, I told them!

Without the large holes in ciabatta, it's like having wine and cheese, but the cheese is velveeta! Maybe that's not a fair analogy, but my quest for ciabatta continues.

Chuppy

P.S. Great blog pics!