My Ciabatta Adventures

[Bill/SFNM]

I am new to eGullet, but have been baking breads for a long time. One of my current projects is to perfect Ciabatta using no commercial yeast. I'm currently baking them in my conventional oven, but my next step will be to try them in my wood-burning oven. My approach is based loosely on Nancy Silverton's. Formula is:

Giustos Bread Flour: 100%

Water (including starter): 70%

Milk: 4%

Salt: 2.75%

Olive Oil: 4%

Natural Yeast starter (no commercial yeast): 15% of entire dough

Here is a photo after a 6 hour room temp fermentation and 3 day retard in the refrigerator. The rubber band marks the starting point. Probably more of a rise that you are used to seeing, but at 7000 feet above sea level, those critters get a lot of volume:

Here is one of the loaves baking on parchment paper which is removed after 15 minutes.

Here is a baked loaf:

Here is a cross section of the crumb:

The flavor and crust are just what I'm looking for, but I want to get the crumb a little lighter. Next batch will be with Giustos Hi-Gluten flour and little more water. Suggestions welcome. I hope I can contribute and learn much here.

Bill/SFNM

Edited November 4, 2006 by Bill/SFNM (log)

[jackal10]

Less proof gives more oven spring and more total volume.

Salt looks a bit high 2% is more usual.

Main issue is the dough is not nearly wet enough for true ciabatta. They are more usually around 90% hydration or even 100%, rather then the 74% you have. That's why the dough is tricky to handle, and he loaf slipper shaped

You pretty well pour it out. I find it easiest to handle on silicone paper like you do.

[Bill/SFNM]

Main issue is the dough is not nearly wet enough for true ciabatta. They are more usually around 90% hydration or even 100%, rather then the 74% you have. That's why the dough is tricky to handle, and he loaf slipper shaped

In Hamelman's "Bread" book, he uses 74%. Silverton's looks to be about the same, maybe a little less depending on the hydration of the starter. The best ciabatta I ever had was in a little bakery in Liguria where I watched them forming the loaves. The dough was clearly very sticky but they were able to handle it with their hands using lots of bench flour.

But what you say makes sense and I'll steadily increase the hydration to see what happens. Thanks!

Bill/SFNM

[devlin]

I agree with Jack that you need more water. But I'm not so sure a higher gluten flour will yield better results. Italian flour isn't high gluten, after all, so I'm thinking you might do better to continue using the same flour for now.

[UnConundrum]

Second the lower gluten.

[Bill/SFNM]

Second the lower gluten.

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I will heed the advice to stick with the bread flour and increase the hydration. Thanks for the help!

My thinking in using a higher-gluten flour was based on my earlier attempts to make this bread using 00 pizzeria flour which has a slightly lower protein content. This flour was not able to develop an adequate gluten structure at this high a hydration. I understand that protein content is only one of many variables of the flour affecting this, but the bread flour was a big improvement over the pizza flour.

Bill/SFNM

[UnConundrum]

Even bread flour has higher gluten content. I took some courses up at King Arthur and they suggest all purpose for most breads. We did a ciabatta there with AP, and it turned out great. I've been using a no knead method for baguettes that are absolutely wonderful. You can see my recipe and step by step pictures HERE. I know the picture is of a boule, and the directions are for boules... I did that for baking in a Big Green Egg, but I follow the same steps and just shape differently for baguettes.

[Baggy]

Having just joined eGullet I was interested to hear how your ciabatta making is progressing. I promised myself to start working on ciabatta for a couple of years, but never got round to it.

I saw you had some helpful comments. Looking at the end result, your bread looks good already.

If I can add a few thoughts. I agree with jackal10 that salt levels are typically kept around 2% of flour, but US formulae tend to adjust salt upwards with higher levels of water. Although this is not the practice in Europe, it does make sense, as the gluten will be stronger with more salt.

But higher salt also reduces the activity of the yeast, so sourdough often has lower levels of salt to make up for the weaker rising-power. It is definitely worth playing around with the salt level as it changes the relative activity of yeast and the sourdough bacteria. This leads to a more fruity (higher salt level) or more sour taste (less salt); depending on which type of bacteria have the upper hand.

Changing the fermentation temperature has the same effect, with dough prepared at higher temperatures (even up to 40C) having a fruitier taste as the lactic acid bacteria are preferred over the sour acetic acid bacteria (which can be favoured at temperatures as low as 10C). The yeast will be considerably more active at higher temperatures, giving greater volume (but a milder taste)

The comments made about hydration are also interesting as hydration levels are significantly different between countries. In the US, ciabatta dough tends to have a very high hydration, sometimes even up to 85% of flour. Italian formulae for ciabatta tend to be around the 55 – 60% hydration and still end up with the floppy, soft dough.

If you couple this with the fact that there is no accepted standard formula for ciabatta in Italy, with every region having its own version, it is probably best to think of ciabatta as a technique for managing doughs that won’t keep their shape, rather than a particular bread formula.

This would go some way to explaining why high hydration is used with hard wheat flours in order to end up with a floppy, plastic rather than elastic dough.

The only other comment I might suggest is that ciabatta dough is usually given a final proof in a relatively wide pan and divided shortly before baking, not earlier. This gives less chance for the dough to spread thinly and reduces escape of gas which would reduce volume. This gets the best out of weak flour that has poor gas retention and little gluten.

Hope you have continued success!

[jay b]

i make ciabatta at work and i use allpurpose flour.with ahigh ratio of water.let it rest in along plastic container.that way i handle it as little as possible .

[Dom W]

Bill,

I have tried a number of different formulas for sourdough ciabatta.

This is the one that I have found gives a loaf with the lightest, most open texture.

The technique is a variation of the Peter Reinhart a l'ancienne technique.

Dough

* 200g starter (at 60% hydration)

* 425g water

* 340g white flour

* 160g 00 white flour

* 10g salt

* 3g malt

The dough is mixed then put in the fridge overnight.

The next day it is taken out and allowed to bulk ferment with folds every hour until it is light and bubbly (slashing the surface reveals a rich network of bubbles)

It is then divided (the above formula makes two) folded one last time into a rough rectangle (no more shaping than that), and left to prove (seam side up) for another 2/3/4 hours on a well-floured tea-towel.

I very gently stretch it when it is flipped onto a peel, then shovel it into the oven turned up to max. Steam as you would normally. turn the oven down to a more sensible temperature to finish the bake.

hope this helps

cheers

Dom

[Bill/SFNM]

Dom.

Thank you for the information - beautiful looking loaves. What are the specs for what you call "white flour" and "00 white flour"? Thanks!

Bill/SFNM

[Dom W]

sorry Bill I thought after I had posted that perhaps I should have been more specific.

the 'white' flour is unbleached organic plain white flour, 11.5g protein (Kialla, Australia)

the 00 flour is an Italian white flour (Mollini Pizzuti), 11.9g protein

cheers

Dom

[Bill/SFNM]

Dom,

I tried your approach with truly impressive results. The moment I pulled the loaves from the oven I knew something was different; they felt light as a feather. The softer flour along with the folding really helped. I used Caputo 00 Pizzeria and King Arthur All-Purpose flours.

The loaves still aren't as nice as yours. I need to play around with the fermenting/proofing times. Also perhaps with the ratio of the flours. Stay tuned and thanks so much for your help.

Bill/SFNM

[vengroff]

I've also been baking naturally leavened ciabatta lately. After a series of experiments, I'm converging on a formula and technique that I really like. Here are the results of my latest effort. The crumb has a reall nice openness about it, with a springy chewy mouth feel. The taste is of wheat and yeast, with just a tiny finish of sourdough tang.

The technical details of the formula I used for the bread shown above are:

Starter (at 100% hydration): 150%

Flour (KA bread): 100%

Water: 74%

Salt: 2%

This works out to a final hydration of 85%. The technique is actually fairly similar to Dom W.'s description above. I'll go into more detail, with additional pictures, in posts to come.

[jackal10]

Use soft pastry flour 9% protein or so.

Ciabattas were developed with European flours in mind...

[vengroff]

The first step down the road to baking this ciabatta took place 48 hours in advance. I fed my starter to bulk it up for use in this formula. It had last been fed 48 hours earlier, so it had not gotten very acidic yet, which is how I like if for ciabatta anyway.

Here is the starter, fresh from the fridge, being measured out before bulking up.

I used 300g of starter, which I tripled by adding 300g or water and 300g of KA bread flour. I normally start by whisking the existing started with the water to ensure a very uniform distribution of microflora. I've found that when I do this the resulting starter bulks up more quickly than if I mix the flour and water together and add chunks of the old starter as some advise.

This is the starter and water before mixing.

This is a closup after mixing. I've basically got a very wet starter now, and it gets active and bubbly very quickly.

Once the flour goes in, it returns to a more typical thick-batter kind of consistency.

From here, it grows very quickly at room temperature. This is what it looks like less than three hours later. The top of the blue tape indicates where it started.

After that, it was back into the fridge overnight before going into the final dough.

[vengroff]

The next morning, I brought the starter back up to room temperature, and mixed the dough according to the formula above. I mixed it by hand at first, and then once it came together put it in a mixer with a dough hook for about 6 minutes.

This was the first time I had gone to this level of hydration (85%) in anything but a pain a l'ancienne. Wow, was it wet. I was concerned that turning was going be a real pain.

It ended up not being nearly as bad as I thought. A plastic pastry scraper dipped in water did a nice job of getting the dough up off the bottom of the tray. By the third turn the dough actually held it's shape more than long enough to snap a picture before it spread back out.

From there, I let it prove another 90 minutes, until it had roughly doubled in bulk.

[vengroff]

The next step was shaping. First, I poured the dough out, using the plastic scraper again to seperate it from the bottom of the plastic tray. This worked quite well and I got the dough onto the counter with very limited loss of gas.

Working on a heavily floured surface with heavily floured hands, I cut the dough in two with a scraper, tri-folded each peice, and carefully lifted them onto a floured couche laid flat on the counter. I then sprinkled the loaves with more flour and folded the couche around them. As you can see, I use the high-tech juice glass approach to keep the walls of the couche in place.

After about an hour under plastic wrap, they were bulked up and ready for the oven.

I rolled each loaf off of it's side of the couch onto a peel. From there it was onto a stone pre-heated to 450F. There was a pan of water below the stone, and I misted the over after 30 and 60 seconds. After that, 20 minutes of baking produced the loaves you saw in the first post.

[vengroff]

Use soft pastry flour 9% protein or so.

Ciabattas were developed with European flours in mind...

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Thanks for the tip.

I started down the bread flour road following the formulas in Reinhart's BBA, which call for bread flour. After switching from his biga/poolish versions to natural leavening, I've been experimenting mainly with hydration and retardation time. But protien content is another knob I guess I should start turning.

[Abra]

That's a beautiful tutorial, Vengroff, and the wettest dough I have ever imagined!

Do you know what causes that shininess in the crumb of your close-ups? I have gotten that occasionally in my breads, but I don't know why.

[jackal10]

You might find it easier to put the dough on silicone baking paper when you shape it. That way you can handle the dough on the paper and put it in the oven still on the paper, You need less flour on the couche and the peel and it doesn't stick.

You can then go to even higher hydrations - I've used 100%

[vengroff]

Do you know what causes that shininess in the crumb of your close-ups?  I have gotten that occasionally in my breads, but I don't know why.

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I find it tends to be associate with high hydration and retarding. It's also usually a sign of a chewy crumb. But I don't know any more details than that.

[Ann_T]

Vengroff, I wish I had seen your pictorial before I got started yesterday.. I made a sourdough biga last night and used it to make Ciabatta today.

[vengroff]

Vengroff, I wish I had seen your pictorial before I got started yesterday..  I made a sourdough biga last night and used it to make Ciabatta today.

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Very nice looking loaf.

[glennbech]

Vengroff, I wish I had seen your pictorial before I got started yesterday.. I made a sourdough biga last night and used it to make Ciabatta today.

Awsome crumb texture! :-)

Edited February 21, 2007 by glennbech (log)