March 10, 2009 - 9:08am
Hand mixing Ciabatta from a biga
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?
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Wow! I don't know....your ciabatta looks so good that I don't know if I would change anything. Peter Reinhart also has a ciabatta with biga. I think Peter's biga is about 67% hydration. I didn't have a problem mixing in the biga, and I only use my hands to make bread.
Thanks! I'll have a look at thhe recipes in more detail. I only recently bought the BBA.
Like you, I've been using a 50% hydration formula. I haven't had any problem with lumps and it has worked fairly well.
I must admit that I haven't used the "proper" Ciabatta flour. In fact, I used the only thing I had on hand for this last batch - AP bleached; ugh!!! Results were much better than expect however.
You didn't mention how you initiate your biga but I'm assuming your using the well method for adding the liquid. I mix by hand, using a plastic spatula.
The biga itself was just mixed water + flour + yeast. In the book, it then suggests you add the biga to the flour, then add the water, oil, more yeast, mix a bit, then add the salt. I mixed it with a plastic scraper, but it would have been a much easier process for me had the biga been a bit wetter.
I found that the biga was so dry that it clumped out as quite solid little lumps, and I felt some of them when working the dough even towards the end. I don't know if you'll notice any in the finished product or whether the rising/proofing will have smoothed them out. It wasn't very pleasant to handle though!
Would it do any good if you adjusted your recipe by taking about 1/4 cup of the water prescribed for the final mixing step and included it in the biga? By the time you combined all the final ingredients your flour, salt, etc. wouldn't know if the water came with the biga or alongside it.
I did wonder about that myself, and wasn't sure about the reasoning behind bigas being so dry?
to mix the biga into the water with a whisk first. You will find many formulas direct you to do this. Then you proceed with the addition of flour etc. If you make the mistake of adding the oil to the liquid you will get a lumpy mess. It does all come right as you surmised when it proofs but you are correct that it is horrible to work with. So try this and you will be pleasantly surprised. c
If you want to try a simple, high hydration ciabatta, try the Jason's Coccodrillo ciabatta on this site. It is never-fail delicious, full of holes and crusty, but slippery as oobleck.
Patricia
Thanks for the tip. I had noticed that one but wanted to try the one from Crust as it speciifcally uses ciabatta flour, and I'd got a bag to try.
That would make more sense, I think. Thanks for the tip.