Jason's Quick Ciabatta au levain

I've been making Jason's Quick Ciabatta lately and decided to try it with a wild yeast starter instead of the commercial yeast.  Except for a greatly prolonged initial rising, it performed much like the yeasted variety.  Instead of the 2 teaspoons of commercial yeast I used 200 g of active starter at 100% hydration, to which I added 480g of water and 500g of white flour and 12g of salt.  The "beat the hell out of it" stage may have taken a couple of minutes longer, but it was basically the same.  During the initial fermenting I boosted the temperature in the Proofinator 5000 (my proofing box) to 90 degrees and it took about 6 hours to tripple.  It was a little stickier to handle but not much and I'd been making the yeasted variety lately so my wet dough handling skills were up to it, also it didn't spring quite as much as the yeasted variety in the oven, but plenty for me and I prefer the taste from the wild yeast preferment.

An experiment that worked!

:-Paul