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Sourdough Ciabatta

I have been having a blast making artisan bread with the Artisan Breads at Home recipe book. They have a very strict sense of sourdough and how the starter should be constructed. It is different than anything I’ve done before, but I’ve had such fun and good luck with the breads I made thus far that I decided to give their sourdough a try.

Now that I’ve got my sweetie hooked on ciabatta, it seemed only natural to make the sourdough ciabatta recipe from the book. With normal ciabtta you start with a poolish. With the sourdough version, you make the poolish with sourdough.

Sourdough Poolish:

3/4 cup of water at about 60 degrees
1 cup of sourdough starter
1 and 3/4 bread flour
2Tb + 2ts pf whole wheat flour

Put the water and the starter in the mixing bowl with a dough hook. Mix for 1 minute on low. Add the flours and mix for 3 minutes. Flip the dough once during the mixing. Put the poolish in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it sit out for a day.

The next day, you are ready to make the bread. In a mixing bowl put 1 and 2/3 cups water at 80 degrees and the sourdough poolish. Mix on low for 1 minute. Then add:
4 and 1/2 cups of bread flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp rapid rise yeast
1Tb salt

Mix for 4 minutes on low speed. The bowl will need scrapping. At the end of the 4 minutes put 1/3 + 1 Tb of 80 degree water in a measuring cup. Pour about half the water into the mixing bowl. Mix for about 2 minutes, or until the water has been absorbed. Pour the rest of the water and mix on medium speed. The dough will be sticky but well defined.

Put the dough in a large oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it rise for 45 minutes or until about double in size. When it is ready, turn the dough on to the counter — make sure the counter top is nicely floured. Using a dough scrapper, fold the dough into thirds, cover and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Then, take a cookie sheet and cover it with a cloth napkin. dust the napkin with flour and cornmeal. When the timer goes off, divide the dough into two pieces. Roll each one in a flour/cornmeal mixture and place upside down on the cookie sheet. Gently stretch the dough out to fit the sheet. Cover with plastic wrap for 60 minutes.

About 20 minutes before baking, preheat your oven to 500 degrees so the baking stone can get nice and hot. 10 minutes before baking, place a brownie pan with 3 cups of water on the bottom rack of the oven. This will give you the moisture you’ll need to really pop the bread dough.

When the timer goes off, gently flip the dough onto a pizza peel covered with a piece of parchment paper. Lightly dab the loaves with water and wait 5 minutes. Then put the loaves in the over, putting the parchment paper right on the baking stone.

Reduce the heat to 475 degrees and let the bread bake for 12 minutes. After 12 minutes, remove the water pan (carefully!) and pull the parchment paper from the loaves. Reset the loaves on the baking stone, if needed and let the bread bake for another 15-20 minutes.

When the crust is nice and dark and the bread has a nice thump to it when you tap it, it’s ready to come out of the oven.

Put the loaves on a cooling rack. The last thing you want is your beautiful bread getting gummy from moisture!

Now comes the hard part. Waiting to eat it. I usually have to set the timer for 20 minutes to give the poor bread a chance to cool at least a little bit before we dive in. I know that many bakers, including Eric Kastel, the author of Artisan Breads, are horrified at the idea of eating improperly cooled bread, but oh my, the delight of butter melting on hot bread….

Who can wait? Pass the butter!

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