My first attempt at Jason's Ciabatta, made with a Bosch Universal. Win!

My family and I love a little Italian restaurant in the next town and I always enjoy their bread which I dip in their flavored olive oil. Today I decided to try Jason's ciabatta to see if I could best their bread, and I'm quite pleased with the results.

The first challenge I had was to make this with my Bosch Universal Plus mixer which has been considered less than optimal for very wet doughs. One thread had suggested that the dough paddles could be used, so I decided to start off with those with the addition of the scraper attachment. 

Here's the setup.

I used the semolina version:

350g bread flour 
150g semolina flour 
485 water 
2tsp. yeast 
15g salt

For sake of completeness I use SAF instant gold yeast. 

All ingredients went into the bowl and mixed on first speed for perhaps 20 seconds. At this time it occurred to me that I should have recorded all temps, but having mixed the flour and water it was too late for individual measurements. I'm sure someone can backwards calculate if desired.

Room/flour temp- 67F

Mixed ingredients- 77F

With the suction feet on the Bosch I didn't have to stand over it so I set a timer for 10 minutes and came back to this.

If you look at the beater you see it covered with dough, but it's only on the surface, like a film. It also had developed a fair bit.

At this point I had to make a decision as to whether to keep using the dough paddle or switch to the hook. Since things looked good so far I kept things as they were.

I then switched to speed 3 and stood over the bowl to wait until it pulled away from sides. 

An "action" shot of the Bosch in motion.

I called it quits between 2 and 3 minutes later. The final dough temp was 84F

13 minutes mixing in all gave me this.

It looks like it's flowing, but it's not. I had pulled it up twice as far, but lowered it for the pic. I'd say it's proof of gluten development. Rheologically it's... weird. It's a lot like the non-Newtonian goop my son has played with in terms of how it feels. 

Here it's scooped out onto an oiled and floured parchment sheet.

45 minutes later after being divided, individual bubbles poked out and covered with plastic wrap. Ready for the 500F oven.

Here's my high tech steam injection device.

Baked for 15 minutes, rotated and then 10 minutes more. Internal temp was 205F

I turned off the heat and  opened the door a crack for 5 more minutes to dry up a bit.

The results? 

I have a closeup of the crumb, but alas "upload failed". I'll try later. The crust was perfect as was the crumb. 

Final thoughts:

This works and it works well. For doughs which are much drier I would switch from paddles to dough hook for fear of breaking them. I'll wait until there's substantial resistance/signs of gluten development and hopefully that will provide optimal mixing. I would also advise exceeding the original formula amount. It might be possible, but things slowed a bit and didn't speed up even when set to highest speed. No sense in busting things. 

I think you'll be satisfied with the results.