Home Made Ciabatta

With Jane Ward

This recipe for ciabatta requires no kneading and just a bit of hand shaping rather than rolling. The only effort you’ll need to make is some advance planning and organization. If you want ciabatta for Saturday’s dinner, for example, start it on Friday night or very early Saturday morning.

This dough, in its various stages, can be left alone, forgotten even, for stretches of time while you leave the house for work or errands or even while you sleep. When you’re almost ready for dinner, give yourself an hour or two in which to shape the two loaves, give them their final rise, and then bake them.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups cool water
3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, divided
2 teaspoons instant yeast, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Instructions

1. Stir the water, 2 cups of the flour, and 1 teaspoon of the yeast together in a bowl, cover, and let this starter sponge rest at room temperature for several hours, or overnight.
2. When the sponge has risen and is very foamy, add to it the remaining flour, 1 teaspoon of yeast, and salt, and mix vigorously until the dough begins to hold together. This will be a very shaggy, slightly sticky dough. Only add a little more flour of the dough seems too wet and hard to handle. Lightly flour the sides of the bowl and the top of the dough. Cover the bowl with a piece of oiled plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 1 hour or so.
3. After it has risen, gently deflate the dough. Set it aside to rise another hour.
4. Turn it out onto a liberally floured work surface and sprinkle lots of flour on top. With your fingertips, flatten the dough to an 8″ x 10″ rectangle, about 3/4″ thick, and cut it lengthwise into two pieces, each about 4″ x 10″.
5. Gently pick up the loaves and transfer them onto a baking sheet lined with a piece of parchment, leaving some space between the two. Cover with heavily oiled plastic wrap, and let rise until puffy, about an hour.
6. While the dough is rising, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Bake the ciabatta in the preheated oven until it is golden brown, approximately 22 minutes. Time will vary depending on your oven, so begin checking for doneness after 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and transfer the finished loaves to a cooling rack.

Recipe courtesy of Jane Ward, Food and Fiction (http://authorjaneward.wordpress.com), 2010.

Jane is the author of HUNGER (Forge, 2001) and THE MOSAIC ARTIST, and is currently at work on her third novel, THE WELCOME HOME.  A former baker and caterer, Jane hosts a new video blog for an internet recipe resource, and regularly contributes articles to the online regional food magazine, Local In Season. Jane also blogs weekly about food, and is writing a cookbook/memoir entitled TATTOOED WITH FOOD based on the blog entries.  From Food For Thought column: "Jane shows how ridiculously easy it is to make a loaf of ciabatta bread with a gutsy crackling crust that tastes like it was baked in a Tuscan panetteria. She teaches that the holes in ciabatta are specifically engineered to hold roasted peppers, pesto, gooey melted cheese, as it is the bread of bruschettas and picnic sandwiches. That purposely definitive crust holds everything inside, like a perfectly designed suitcase for foods, more than a sandwich."