I just made some ciabatta with "proper" ciabatta flour from Shipton Mill. It was using a recipe, from Richard Bertinet's Crust, which uses a biga (at around 50% hydration).It was ok to work once mixed, but I found it very hard to get rid of all the lumps: maybe a mixer would be better for this sort of mix?

Next time I'm planning on trying these loaves with a poolish starter, as described in the Bread Baker's Apprentice, or maybe a sourdough only recipe (there's one on WildYeast, I think?).

Has anyone tried the different approaches?