Sourdough Ciabatta

I am submitting this recipe for Sourdough Ciabatta to Fresh From The Oven which is being hosted this month by Utterly Scrummy Food For Families.

Each weekend I try to bake a new type of sourdough loaf in order to get the feel for how the dough works and to change things up a bit in my house. I am not a huge fan of ciabatta loaves as I find the crust to hard and usually end up cutting the top of my palate. In fact, even when we are in Italy I tend not to buy ciabatta. However, reading Celia’s recipe I realized that it is the baking time that affects the crustiness and so I decided to give ciabatta a chance. The first loaves I made were nothing like ciabatta and might have had everything to do with the fact that I relied on my memory and did not follow the recipe when making the loaves. Not only did I make use of tap water, I also added oil! Then last weekend I decided to follow the recipe, but instead of using semola flour like Celia, I used 00 pasta flour. This is very fine and added a very soft texture to the ciabatta. This weekend I used the semola flour so that I could get a comparison between the two before posting a recipe for this month’s Fresh From The Oven challenge. Personally I prefer the softer loaf, but please take a look at Celia’s recipe for the original!

do you like soft or crusty loaves of bread?

Sourdough Ciabatta
Sourdough Ciabatta
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Sourdough Ciabatta

Recipe Category: Bread
All Rights Reserved: an original recipe from Lavender and Lime

Ingredients

  • 150 g fed sourdough starter
  • 335 g iced water
  • 250 g bread flour
  • 250 g 00 pasta flour
  • 9 g fine salt
  • Rye flour for dusting

Method

  • Place all of the ingredients in a large bowl
  • Use a spatula and mix everything together until well mixed
  • Cover with cling film and leave for an hour
  • Give the dough a quick knead in the bowl and cover
  • Leave for an hour before kneading for a second time
  • Cover and leave the dough to prove until doubled in size
  • Place a pizza stone (if you have one) into the oven
  • Preheat the oven to 250°Celsius (or the highest temperature setting on your oven if it does not go that high)
  • When the oven is hot generously dust your worktop with rye flour
  • Turn the dough onto the worktop and dust the top of the dough with flour
  • Dust your hands with flour and flatten the dough into a large rectangle
  • With the longer length in front of you, fold the top third down
  • Now fold the bottom third up
  • Cut into two equal pieces and dust the top of the dough and your hands with rye flour
  • Place each piece onto a piece of baking paper and lightly stretch it to give the traditional slipper shape
  • If you are not using a pizza stone place the baking paper onto a baking tray
  • Spray the top of the loaves with water, reduce your oven temperature to 220°Celsius and place the loaves straight into the oven
  • Bake for 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 175°Celsius and bake for 15 minutes for a softer crust or 20 minutes for a hard crust
  • Allow to cool completely before cutting

Click on the links for conversions and notes.

What I blogged:

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34 thoughts on “Sourdough Ciabatta

  1. This looks really good, Tandy. I like a crusty loaf, but not so crusty that it tears my mouth when I bite into it. 🙂

  2. I love sourdough, but so far have not baked any sourdough bread…yours look great Tandy…as for me depends on the kind of bread, I can go with soft or crusty.
    Have a wonderful week 🙂

    1. I love using my starter as it adds such a nice depth of flavour to my breads. Have a great week as well 🙂

  3. Tandy, I’m behind with my blog reading, but I was so thrilled when you tweeted that you were going to post this! Thank you! It’s amazing how well you’ve been able to adapt Cordelia to suit your personal preferences – baking bread really IS all about experience, isn’t it? Experimenting and playing – I’m getting great joy from watching you explore what the starter can do! xx

    1. I am so loving this – I had no idea a sourdough could be so versatile and I think of you every day when I eat another slice of lovely bread or brownies! Baking with sourdough has been by far the greatest experiment of them all. And you will be pleased to know another part of Cordelia is making her way into the world tomorrow 🙂

  4. Dear Tandy, I am experimenting a lot with bread lately. I must say that I love ciabatta bread and I am trying to find the right recipe. I like this version with sourdough…unfortunately my starters keep dieing…I am waiting for the warm summer to make a new starter and bake delicious bread (PS I use strong white flour for bread/focaccia).

I would ♥ to hear from you (comments will be visible when I reply)

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