Ciabatta

My next attempt at bread after the baguettes was a brioche. At the end of the day, I ended up with some delicious brioche, but the journey was rough. The process was long, and kind of complicated given that I don't have a stand mixer. I had to knead the dough for like 20 minutes by hand. Furthermore, while I was making the dough, I had to finish up a project that I was doing with a friend, so I was on Facetime and working on the dough at the same time. Not only did this contribute to a few little mistakes here and there, but it also meant that I was unable to take pictures and document my process making it.

Hence, why there is no post on brioche. But, another Tuesday has come and gone and this time I made ciabatta! And documented it!

I decided to make ciabatta because I wanted to try my hand at another bread that required an overnight starter. I intend to make sourdough next week (I made the starter for the sourdough the at the same time that I made the starter for the ciabatta because the sourdough one requires about a week of resting and feeding) so I wanted to complete another good overnight starter bread before fully graduating to sourdough.

So, on Monday night, using the recipe, I started on the starter, or what is known as the biga for this bread:

3/4 cup cool water

1 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour

1/8 tsp yeast

I actually warmed the water for 30 seconds in the microwave and added a little bit more yeast than it called for, and a little bit of sugar, because I find that I can't really go wrong helping the yeast out a little bit. Then, I mixed it all together, and covered it with a damp towel for about 14 hours. 

 

After I let it rest overnight, it was time to uncover it and go to work. The biga looked awesome, and had clearly done its work overnight. 

 

To the biga, I added 3/4 cup lukewarm water and mixed it all together. Then, in a separate bowl, I added together all of the dry ingredients:

1 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour

1 tsp yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

I added the dry ingredients to the water and biga mixture, and mixed everything together until it formed a dough. I covered the dough with a damp towel, then let it rest for 1 hour. After the hour, I just gently deflated it, and let it rise for another hour.

After the second hour of rising, I took the dough out of the bowl and put it onto a floured work surface (I used my cutting board) and sprinkled flour on top of the dough as well. I then flattened my dough into a rectangle that was roughly 8" by 10", although I didn't measure it, and then cut it in half so that each half would be roughly 4" by 10".

 

After cutting the dough in half, I transferred each half to a separate baking sheet prepped with parchment paper. I covered each loaf with plastic wrap, and let it sit to rise for 2 hours.

 

About 1 1/2 hours into the 2 hour rise, I preheated my oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. I put a pot in the oven to preheat as well. Once it was time to bake, I filled the pot with ice cubes to generate steam, took the plastic wrap off of the loaves and popped them into the oven. Once they were in the oven, I decreased the temperature from 500 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. 

I baked the loaves for about 25 minutes, watching them puff up considerably in the oven and turn golden brown. 

 

I was supposed to turn off the oven and leave the loaves in there to cool but I couldn't wait so I took them out and cut up a slice to eat. Delicious!