How to make Ciabatta

To make a good dish is not as difficult as everyone imagines. Just prepare the ingredients and tableware, control the heat, and then follow the steps for making ciabatta below. I believe you can do it.

1. Use a wooden spoon or whisk to mix the ingredients in the starter evenly. Place it in a warm and humid place to ferment until it is twice as large. The surface of the fermented dough (I think it is more appropriate to call it batter) is covered with bubbles. If it is placed in the refrigerator for overnight fermentation at low temperature, the effect will be better and the bread will have better moisture retention.

2. Take out the fermented starter and add all the ingredients of the main dough at once. Continue to mix with an egg beater, wooden spoon or bread machine to form a dough. Note: If you use a bread machine to mix, do not go through the entire process. Stand by the bread machine and watch and knead it evenly. Excessive mixing will cause the bread baked later to have holes of different sizes. These seemingly strange holes indicate that your bread is a successful Ciabatta.

3. Put the kneaded dough into a basin and continue to ferment. Ferment in a warm and humid place. I thought of a good way, which is a new improvement of my oven fermentation. Put a baking tray filled with hot water on the bottom, cover the surface of the basin with plastic wrap, and then add a wet rag on the plastic wrap (to prevent the plastic wrap from being baked), set the oven temperature to 30 degrees, and the time for 30 minutes. After the time is up, decide whether to continue to add time according to your needs, or do not open the oven if you don’t want to add time, and let the dough continue to stay in the oven to ferment until it doubles or triples in size.

4. Prepare a baking tray and oilcloth, sprinkle dry powder (just flour, low powder, high powder or medium powder is fine) on the oilcloth. If you don’t sprinkle flour, apply oil, otherwise you may not be able to take the bread off intact after baking.

5. Divide the fermented dough into two halves, pour one half on the oilcloth sprinkled with flour, apply olive oil on both hands, and gather the dough. It was my first time making ciabatta, and I didn’t dare to gather it hard, for fear that the gas would be expelled and there would be no big holes in the end. After seeing the photos given by Ziyou, I swore - next time I will gather it hard. Ziyou said that if the bottom is gathered tighter, the surface of the dough will have greater tension. Please note that each step is different from making ordinary toast or sweet bread. Do not over-exert the air or use too much force. If you want to make a successful ciabatta, please always remember how the large and small holes of the ciabatta are formed. A ciabatta with a fine texture is a failed ciabatta.

6. Put the dough in a warm and humid place to continue fermenting. I put the baking tray back into the oven. Don't set the temperature and time this time, because the dough is exposed to the air at this time. If you turn up the temperature again, the surface of the dough will be dried out.

7. When the dough is fermented to twice its original volume, spray water on the surface of the dough.

8. Temperature 200 degrees (my Qihe oven uses 190 degrees, everyone can decide according to the characteristics of their own oven. The baking temperature of ciabatta is higher than that of ordinary bread, the temperature here is for reference only), time 20 minutes, middle layer. Bake until the surface is evenly golden.

Maybe you have eaten many versions of ciabatta, but you definitely can’t imagine what it would taste like if you made it yourself? To satisfy your curiosity, you can really try it yourself.