So, I must confess, I never meant for this loaf to become a ciabatta...in fact this was meant to be a boule, but things got a little too 'hydrated' and I had to leave the house for school. But in the end, I guess things turned out alright!

It all started with wanting to hop on the Susan's Simple Sourdough bandwagon last night. I thought it would be a great attempt to work on my sourdough skills, since I am becoming pretty decent at Whole Grain Breads with a biga and soaker, but I always seem to have a hard time with my attempts at any of Hamelman's recipes. So I thought this looks simple enough (hence the title right?), why not try it? The thing was, I do not have a firm starter, I actually have a liquid levain starter (from Bread), and I started the seed culture from Whole Grain Bread the other day, so I seemed a bit out of luck, until I thought, "Why not just use a tablespoon of my liquid starter with Susan's formula for her starter?". I ended up taking one part liquid levain starter, 1 part water and 3 parts flour. I mixed this muck up into a really sticky, yet firmer starter than what I previously had, let it sit overnight and then got back to it this morning.

When I awoke the starter was filled with nice bubbles and looked ready, so I went ahead and followed Susan's formula the best I could (no scale at the moment so I converted everything to cups and tablespoons the best I could) and ended up with something so sticky even after a thirty minute rest and a stretch and fold. I attempted a S&F again and tossed it back in the bowl this gooeyness came from. I referred back to the recipe and saw it called for two more stretch and folds at an hour each. I didn't have the time, and it really looked like it could use some for S&F love, so after another thirty minutes, I gently patted the dough down, S&F and then repeated thirty minutes later.

I left the dough covered while I went to class and had a quick lunch, I came back two hours later and low and behold, the dough hardly risen and really looked like it could use a S&F session, but I held off, instead I got a little frustrated and thought, "Maybe I am not meant for sourdough...should just stick to WGB"...but then I took another look at the dough, folded and covered in flour on the counter and said, "Damn, that looks like ciabatta!". So I shuffled through my bread books, read on how to shape ciabatta, bake it and then realized I should give it a shot, why not?

After shaping very gently, I let it rise (if you can call it that) for 40 minutes and placed it on my preheated stone at 450 for 40 minutes with steaming and rotating once half way through. End results? A ciabatta loaf!

What was shocking was the dough was maybe a bit under half and inch in height before it hit the stone. So the oven spring was great!

I guess the lesson I learned here was, you can always learn (or make) something useful out of a mistake, just be persistant!

And I will post crumb shots soon enough when I cut it tomorrow for lunch!