Eclectic Ciabatta
It has gotten to the point now when I try something new, I'll read through my library (Leader, Reinhart, Hammelman, Di Muzio, and the CIA's Baking and Pastry), read through the archives of TFL, and then throw tegether a synthesis that somehow makes sense to me.
So I've been working on Ciabatta. I tried the beat-the-daylights technique championed by the famous Jason and apparently customary in Southern Italy (according to Dan Leader's Local Breads). This method calls for spiraling the dough 20 minutes or more at the high end of the mixer's throttle. The product is magnificent, but after years of indoctrination in the careful dough handling techniques of Calvel and his students, it felt practically immoral to turn the mixer up to eleven like that and just let it go.
For the last couple of loaves, I've developed an improved mix at low speeds with subsequent stretching and folding. I also fused the double flour addition technique from Steve B's Breadcetera [1] with the biga-based Ciabatta formula in Dan Di Muzio's book. Dan describes a slightly different interpretation of the double-hydration technique than Steve B does, and in the event Dan's seemed more practical. Hold out about ten or fifteen percent of the water, mix the ingredients to an improved mix, then add the remaining water and mix at low speed until it is absorbed.