My adventures with ciabatta

I'm getting closer to achieving one goal that I set for me: An open texture bread, like ciabatta.

I have had some success, but it's in two halves.

Firstly, I followed Peter Reinhard's recipe in TBBA (poolish version), but the instruction to mix the dough by hand "for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are evenly distributed", did not clearly pass the correct message to me. Although I mixed the dough for the set time, the consistency was all wrong. The bread in the end had quite a nice taste, but it was too dense, almost like a brick.

I, therefore, tried to find another recipe, using YouTube. I noticed that the uploader of the recipe actually gives credit to Jason Molina at http://thefreshloaf.com, which I thought was a good sign!

My second attempt using the YouTube posted recipe was beyond any expectation successful as far as open crumb is concerned. Unfortunately, the bread came out a bit underbaked.

So, combining the two attempts, I would say that I was successful. My next trial will be to go back to Peter Reihart's recipe, but this time I'll make sure that I will have thoroughly mixed the dough, because now I know what the consistency of the dough should look and feel like in order to bake a good ciabatta.