Ciao Ciabatta

What goes with Italian food? Italian bread, of course. This week, my partner David and I, decided to have some friends over for spaghetti and meatballs, so I decided to double-down on the carbs and attempted to make ciabatta bread. Never have I ever thought I’d have to MacGyver a makeshift bread over. Here’s how it went?

Step 1: The night before CarbFest2021, I made what’s called a BIGA. I’d never done this before, but it’s pretty fun, kind of like a weird science experiment. A BIGA is a mix of flour, yeast, and water that bubbles up overnight. You combine it with fresh dough and it creates an awesome spongy bread with lots of holes. 

To make the BIGA, I combined 1 ½ cups of warm water with ½ Teaspoon of yeast and 1 ¼ cup flour. In hindsight, I should have used a little more flour, but it still worked pretty well. I let my BIGA ferment for about 14 hours, but according to the ciabatta experts, you can let it ferment anywhere from six to 24 hours.

Step 2: The next morning, I made the ciabatta dough, which was surprisingly easy. You just get out your handy Kitchen Aid, mix 1 ½ cups warm water and about 3 cups of flour on low until the dough comes together. Then cover it and let it sit for about 30 minutes before you add the salt, yeast, and BIGA. I’m sure you can do this by hand, if you don’t have a stand mixer.

Step 3: After 30 minutes, I added the rest of the ingredients to my dough: ⅓ cup warm water, two Teaspoons of yeast, about a Tablespoon of salt, and my BIGA (I don’t know why I keep putting this in all caps; it just seems like it’s meant to be that way). 

I mixed it in my stand mixer on low for about three minutes so the ingredients could mix together without the water sloshing all around, then I turned the speed up and mixed for another seven minutes. The dough ends up looking very shiny, feels quite sticky, and is very stretchy.

Step 4: After it was properly mixed, I coated a bowl with olive oil and plopped my dough in, covering it and letting it rest for 30 more minutes. Once that 30 minutes was up, I did a series of stretching and folding. To do this, you gently pull the dough up, then fold it over itself, rotating the bowl 90 degrees after each fold, so you end up doing it about four times total. Then, I gently picked it up and tightly turned it over itself, putting it back in its bowl upside down so it looked like a smooth ball. Pro Tip: get your hand wet before you do this, because ciabatta dough is super sticky.

Step 5: After it rested, I laminated my dough. I’ve never done this for bread dough, only for puffier doughs, like croissants, but it seemed to work fairly well in the end. I got my counter wet (cause yup, this dough is very sticky...did I mention that already?) and turned out the dough, then I shaped it into a big rectangle and did a sort of book fold, folding the right side up and over and then the left side up and over. Next, I took the long end of the dough and folded it up the other way. And, of course, after that, I put it back in its bowl to rest. This time for about an hour. This made some pretty great bubbles, by the way.

Step 6: After my hour was up, I floured my counter with tons of flour, because (you guessed it) the dough is really sticky at this point. I even put flour on my hands and on the top of the dough after I carefully poured it out of the bowl; I got flour everywhere, even my hair. Once it was on the counter, I cautiously shaped my dough into a sort of square shape and divided it up into three large ciabattas using a bread scraper. Did you know that ciabatta means slipper in Italian? Whoever is wearing these slippers must have giant feet.

After cutting my ciabatta into three slippers, I put each of them onto its own piece of parchment, covered them up, and let them rest for 30 minutes. Pro tip: Be super careful at this point and try not to knock any of the air out of your dough. It can be tricky. I went underneath the dough when moving it and that seemed to work well enough. If you have a bread scraper, it comes in hand. You could even try moving it more easily with a large spatula.

Step 7: This was the hardest part of the ciabatta situation. I tried to create my own steam oven to bake my ciabattas. First, I set my oven to 500 degrees to preheat it and get it nice and hot to create that yummy, crunchy crust. Then, I used a cookie sheet on the bottom of my oven. I filled it with hot water to create a steam effect. Then, I used an upside down cookie sheet to bake the ciabattas. And finally, I covered them with a makeshift bread cloche, using one of those disposable roasting pans you can buy at the store. While it got the job done, this did not work as well as I’d wanted it to. If I were doing this again, which I likely will at some point, I’d use a pizza stone or something that retains heat more than a cookie sheet. But, sometimes you just have to Macgyver the situation. Right?

Step 8: Once my ciabattas were ready to bake, I turned the heat down to 480 degrees, loaded them into my weird Macgyver steam oven, and baked them for about 12 minutes. Then I took my makeshift turkey roaster off the top and baked them for about 15 more minutes. They probably could have used more steam and more time, but they didn’t turn out too badly. And they sounded hollow when I thumped them, which is a good sign. I just wish the crust would have been a bit crunchier.

In the end, I had a lot of fun trying this. Plus, the ciabattas turned out better than I’d hoped. The spaghetti, on the other hand, was scrumptious. Ciao!