woefulbaker, your ciabatta looked great.  Would you mind sharing your recipe.  My ciabatta tastes good, but does not develope the classic crumb like yours.  Thanks in advance. 

I always get holey crumb when I bake white recipies from american cook books. As I live in sweden most standard wheat flour has a protein content of about 10% there is however bread flour availble wich has 12% protein, this flour however is roughly twice the price of normal flour so when I bake I use 50/50 bread/AP.

 This results in a final protein content of 11%, roughly. When making the dough I most often end up with a rather slack dough, probably due to my lower protein content. My breads don´t hold their shape all too well but they puff up nicely in the oven and most of the time I end up with crumb structure similar to the ciabatta above. I actually made the Francese bread from SFBI's advanced bread and pastries this saturday. Baked 1 long and 10 rolls. The rolls ended up being mostly air, lovely! 

 However, my conclusion is this: Lower protein content, and maybe add in a pinch of ascorbic acid if you don't hate cemicals, I don't but then I love the wonders of technology!