Originally Posted by
peaceandjoy
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.