Made It: Ciabatta Bread

This is probably my favourite bread to eat.  It's nearly perfect - chewy, great crumb, wonderful texture, crispy crust, nice flavour.  It also, as it happens, is quite easy to make for a novice bread maker like myself.  In order to get that wonderful chewy texture, you have to work with a very wet dough, which does not lend itself to kneading, so this is a kitchenaid bread. 

Biga
1 1/2 cups flour
pinch yeast
3/4 cup warm water

Dough
3 cups flour
1/2 t. yeast
1 t. salt
1 1/2 cups warm water
Biga

Start the night before with the Biga, which is like a sourdough starter.  Mix yeast & warm water together in a medium bowl, then add flour.  Combine, then cover with saran and leave out over night.

Next morning, mix up the rest.  Start with warm water in the mixer bowl, add yeast, stir, then add the biga.  After that is combined gently, add the flour and salt.  **if you forget the salt the bread will taste bad!
Gently mix to combine the ingredients.  Once combined, cover with saran and let autolyze for 30 minutes.

Mix again on low setting (1 or 2) for 30-45 seconds.  Cover with saran and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.  (For me this takes several hours)

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and dust top with flour.  This is the "kneading" part, only you don't knead.  Imagining the dough as a shape having 4 sides, stretch out each side and pile it on top.  Let sit under a giant bread bowl with a warm cup of water to keep it moist and warm.  Repeat every 20 minutes or so for 4-5 times. 

Divide your dough.  I do it in half and it makes 2 decent sized loaves.  Stretch each piece as you did before, cover and rise 30 minutes.

Place on a parchment lined baking sheet, shaping as necessary.  Bake at 360 for 20-25 minutes until bread is a nice caramel colour and has a good crust. 

I don't have any "after" shots of this bread since I took one loaf to a friend's for dinner RIGHT as it came out of the oven, and then we ate the other loaf as sandwiches today.  I do however have this older pic:

The 2 top left loaves are Dave's "regular bread" recipe, which is what I made today!  However, mine turned out slightly differently because a) of Dave's erratic and changeable use of ingredients and b) I let them rise too long in the loaf pans and they fell a bit when they baked :(   But the other 4 are the ciabatta.  Don't they look delicious??  Yum!  So delicious with a swipe of butter and some honey.