January 24, 2017 - 5:30pm
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Can't get airy crumb in my ciabatta bread ???
Made the starter 12 hours prior. Followed recipe to a tee. Dough was wet like it was suppose to be. I don't have a stand mixer so I used my food processor to mix the dough. Help please...
thing you could have done. No need for a mixer either. WIth a wet dough of 90% -95% hydration or more, all you need is time and few stretch and folds to make the bread perfectly.
Happy ciabatta making.
Thank you for the advise
probably didn't help much, depends on the amount of time and with with blade or bar in the machine. A blade tends to cut gluten if done too long, a few quick pulses don't hurt a thing when first mixing.
As DB stated, You can make ciabatta easily with hand mixing and folding. I would suggest holding back on the water, eventually after several baking attempts increase the water if the flour can take it and you are comfortable with the high hydration.
Mini, what is the reason for holding back some of the water? I'm kinda new at Bread baking so knowing why will help me in the future. Thanks for your help.
Perhaps the flour used is less absorbent than the flour stated in the recipe. That would give a dough too wet to handle. Handling wet or high hydration doughs is not as easy as lower hydrations. Naturally one doesn't want too stiff a dough but If you find the dough too fluid, even with folds to tighten up the gluten, it might be easier for you as a beginner to start out with less water in the recipe and work yourself up as skill develops. Each flour seems to has it maximum limit to what it can do as far as bread baking.
Water is the easiest ingredient to change in a recipe because salt, and other ingredients relate to the flour amount.
If the dough is too wet and one adds more flour instead of reducing the water amount, one also has to adjust the salt and any other ingredients accordingly to maintain original dough flavour. Holding back water gives one the chance to always add more water if needed. Especially if the recipe is being tackled for the first time.
I've gotten into the habit of always checking the hydration of a recipe before I ever mix the ingredients. Depending on your location, flour moisture and time of year, the recipe could behave differently even when all the weights are the same.
Thank you for the info, Mini. The recipe used was definiely very wet. Learn something new everyday. Again, thanks