A Ciabatta Bread Recipe that consists of 2 stages. A well developed Poolish, and a long and slowly proofed dough.
Make a “Poolish” first
Ingredients – Grams
Bread Flour 100
Water 100
Dry Yeast 2
Mix the ingredients and let it ferment for at least 2 hours. I left this one overnight, to develop more flavor. I weigh in grams because it is an easy calculation if you want to adjust the recipe size, but the important thing here is the ratio of water to flour. This recipe make one nice sized ciabatta loaf, but can easily be adjusted for a bigger yield.
Next,
The Ciabatta Bread Recipe
Ingredients – Grams
Bread Flour 25o
Water 150
Salt 8
Dry Yeast 2
Putting together the Ciabatta Bread Recipe
Mix the dough and add the poolish and mix until combined. This only takes a few minutes.
Wait 30 minutes. This is an autolyse period which allows the flour to hydrate properly.
After autolyse, add the salt and mix for about 10 minutes. The dough should be pretty sticky, so don’t add any more flour.
Leave the dough in a large bowl to ferment.
After 30 minutes, fold the dough and wait another 30 minutes. Fold the dough again. Then wait another 30 minutes and the take the dough out of the bowl, and leave undisturbed for 20 minutes.
Next shape gently so as not to lose the loft the dough. You can make individual Ciabatta rolls or full sized Ciabatta breads. Remember, this is sticky dough and even though you don’t want to add flour, you can dust the outside to make it a bit easier to handle. Dust sparingly.
Place the Ciabatta breads on parchment or on a bread or pizza peel and let rise for about 40 minutes
Preheat your oven for about 30 minutes to get the stone hot and put a small pan in the oven at the same time.
Finally stretch the ciabatta bread and put it onto a baking stone. I use an 18″ x 18″ piece of travertine (limestone) tile.
Pour a cup of boiling water into the pan that you have preheated so you can bake with steam.
Bake – 460 for 30-35 minutes or until the bread reaches an internal temp of 200 F.