Medium
31
loaves at 1 lb , 2 ozPublished 2004
Ciabatta is a Bread that America has Learned to love dearly. Its domestic popularity rose quickly after it was chosen as one of the five breads that were baked in 1996 in Paris, at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, the World Cup of Baking. The exceptional quality of the ciabatta helped earn the United States first prize for breads at that memorable competition.
Ciabatta dough is unique in many ways: First, it is a very wet and sticky dough, with often upwards of 80 percent or even higher hydration. This requires some special handling (like locking all the doors so the bakers can’t run for the exits). Further, there is no preshaping or final shaping—once divided, the dough is simply placed onto a floured work surface for its final proofing. And last of all, ciabatta dough is left unscored when loaded into the oven. The ciabatta formulas printed here all have a deep, suffusing wheaty aroma; large air holes due to both the high hydration and lack of degassing that occurs when breads are shaped; and a thin, blistered crust. When well made, it yields splintered crumbs when cut, and a long and memorable flavor, as the bread vanishes into happy bellies.
In the formulas, the ciabatta dough is scaled at
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© 2004 All rights reserved. Published by Wiley.