Accidental Ciabatta
Started out planning to make a sourdough and ended up with something more like a ciabatta. Not sure what I should call it but it was one of the best loafs I've made to date. No way I could do it again as I'm not 100% sure of the chain of events, but I'll give it a bash.
Monday evening I mixed up my regular dough of about 100g Rye and 400g strong white flour, 350ml water, salt and about 50g of my starter. I fed the rest of my starter at the same time. ( I just throw half it in and feed the other half.)
Tuesday morning still nothing had happend but the starter had risen . I was going away for a coulple of days so I threw the mixing bowl in the fridge covered in cling film figuring it would slow down and be ok when I got back.
Thursday night I took it out the fridge and left it to rise.
Friday morning nothing much had happend, it may have risen a bit but not as I had expected.
At this point I was just going to give up and start again but i remembered I still had a half packet of dried yeast in the cupboard and didn't want to throw the dough away.
In order to get the yeast to mix in I figured I would need a weter dough so I added more water and a flour at the same time. I didn't measure them but I'd say it was about 300ml water and 200ml flour; it was a really really wet dough. I but the bowl on a stand mixer with a dough hook and let it go nuts for 10 minutes then left it for an hour or 2. It started to rise just fine, I folded it 3 times ( I think) over te next 90 minutes and and then I shaped it into 2 loafs and let them rest for anout 30mins.
I carefull turned them over onto a baking sheet and put them in a preheated oven with a mug of water thrown into thebaking dish at the bottom for 20 minutes at 220C and another 15 at 200C. They were really hard to handle but clearly full of air, when I put them on the sheet however they just seemed to deflate and flow out to be really flat.
10 minutes into baking they had almost tripled in height. Amazing amount of spring.
End result was great. they tasted good, they had a nice crumb, big holes, not too sour but nice and chewy. I'll say it myself they even looked good.
Tada.
I've fed up the started since so will be back to baking normal bread but I'll try this again and see if I can replicate it..
Great looking loaves. Very nice interior and crust. Try to figure out what you did and post it. Youve got a winner there.
holds99