Secret ForMaking Ciabatta?
 

I'm trying to make a good, airy, full of holes, Ciabatta bread. I found an interesting way of "kneading" the dough on the King Arthur site: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blo...-dough-by-hand I'm giving it a try this morning. Anyone out there have a other tips for making perfect Ciabatta rolls?

A lot depends on the type of flour used. I took a bread making class some years ago and had several instructors. All said they never used bleached flour for bread. May as well go buy bread if you use bleached flour. I made Ciabatta bread a few times like we did in class. The starter had to set for about 12 hours and the dough was wet and very sticky. Also never measure flour weigh it. The more you bake bread the more good yeast spores are in your kitchen. Good luck with your bread, I can smell it now.

I have never seen that cutting method. Not being far from the actual store I have taken classes up there and done that slap and fold technique which works great. They are (imho) are the best resource for bread making - let us know how it turns out!!

Btw - I have made their GF Ciabatta Rolls and they were fantastic but GF dough acts differently from wheat based dough.

One of my favorite breads is a sourdough ciabatta. Many sourdough recipes do not use traditional mixing methods or kneading, mostly stretching and folding to shape a loaf. Ciabatta, with such high hydration, would be challenging to shape using the usual methods. The recipe I use is from Teresa Greenway of Northwest Sourdough. She has a lot of YouTube videos, but unfortunately, that is not one of them. The flour and water are combined for autolyse at normal hydration; after autolyse, additional liquid (whey or water) is added and folded into it over a series of folding every half hour or so for a couple of hours. She does show the sped up version of it in this clip. As you can see, it's incredibly airy and, oh so good! It's fine to make with water, but when I have whey from making lactose free ricotta, that is the best! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCEl5R8h8KA

Thanks for that link. My Ciabatta rolls came out OK yesterday. I think that I made a couple of mistakes because they were not as light and airy as I would have liked. The rolls did have some big holes here and there, but not throughout the roll. I may have folded the dough too many times. Also, I tried hard not to introduce too much flour in the shaping process, but I probably did. The dough was so wet and sticky, it was hard not to. I used my bench scraper as much as I could, but I also had flour on my board. Also, I could have left them to rise longer. Still, the rolls tasted great.

Looking through my old baking class notes, the ciabatta dough was not kneaded much at all, too wet to do much. I can get the same texture making the no knead bread.

I find with Ciabatta to get nice holes your last fold should be a lamination. Let the Biga ferment 18 hours or so.
This is a good recipe, I find..... Ciabatta video

Watson

Thanks Watson. He had a lot of good tips! I never thought to put a turkey roasting pan over the bread in the oven.

Here's another YouTube video that I found that shows some extra tips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBLhiBFvdvw

I'll be glad to be your ciabatta taster! I love that stuff.