In Richard Hart's Bread book he has a recipe for "Real Italian Ciabatta" that has a biga that contains 100% of the flour and is 45% hydration. The additional water added later results in 75% total hydration. I have tried many different ciabatta recipes but even using an immersion blender and 8 minutes of medium speed in a KA mixer, nothing seems to get rid of the clumps from the dry biga. Any thoughts on getting a smooth dough without going to a higher hydration poolish?
Thanks,
I don't know what the recipe in that book is, but I have tried the actual original recipe by Cavallari. We can't really duplicate it because he used a carefully chosen selection of five flours using local grains with a "special" milling process, and I couldn't find any information on those flours. The original uses a 50% hydration for the biga, close to your 45%.
As long as there are no dry flour bits, it's fine to leave the biga somewhat shreddy instead of being a smooth mass. It might even be better that way - we've had several threads on shreddy bigas. ReneR has been the foremost booster of them. Here's a thread mostly about them, also called shaggy bigas. It's very long and very worth reading:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/68024/biga-controversy
Here is my post on TFL about making the original style ciabatta:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/74294/almost-original-recipe-ciabatta
TomP
Tom,
Thanks for your extensive comments and I enjoyed those links. I have done a SD ciabatta in the past with 20% inoculation that was good however a slightly different taste than the Biga recipe by Hart. My other results with the Hart recipe tasted great buy did have a few lumps. I may experiment with the strands verses vs one mass. I have used the one mass which I thought would help the four to absorb the water.
Benbuck
Can't remember who it was that suggested this, but seem to remember someone else tried it (Lin?) and reported it worked. If I remember well, the suggestion was to leave the biga to soak in the additional water and once it's become more fully hydrated to proceed to mixing up the final dough.
Otherwise I would proceed as sparkfan suggests, a little water at a time.
I also only mix by hand and have never had a big issue with incorporating the biga shreds. Doesn't need to be completely smooth either.
Increasing the hydration by such a high amount is not an eays task. You need a good mixer and you have to proceed like bassinage. Mix the biga until you have a homogenous dough. Then add only very small amounts of water at a time and mix until incorporated. Continue until you reach the desired hydration. I’m not sure if the result is worth the effort.
An immersion blender is for sure not the tool of choise. Not sure which KA you have. With the Kenwood, depending on the flour and the hydration I would probably switch at some point from the dough hook to the K beater.
A good spiral mixer would probably perform better.
Sparkfan,
I would agree on the spiral mixer being a better tool. Most Italian bread makers have them. But for this one particular recipe I am not sure it would be worth the additional purchase. Most of my doughs are small batches which I would rather dough by hand anyway.
Thanks