I’m a bread lover. I can skip anything in my lunch but bread. Bread is a must to be in every meal back in my home country Belarus. So the every-meal-habit grew up into a life-long-love for me. One of my favorites is a ciabatta bread.

Making ciabatta bread has two parts. First, you need to make a starter, or biga, from a small amount of flour, water, and yeast and leave it for 8-12 hours to allow a fermentation process which would give the wonderful flavor and texture to the ciabatta loaves. I usually make the biga in the evening and leave it overnight. Then in the morning, I can start making the dough. So it takes a whole day (and night 🙂 ) to make a ciabatta bread. Of course, most of this time is just waiting time.

Ingredients:

Biga:

• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ cups bread flour *
• 1 ¼ cups water
• ½ tsp active dry yeast

Dough:

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 3 cups bread flour *
• 1 ½ cups water
• 1 Tbsp olive oil + 1 more to oil a bowl
• 2 Tbsp whole milk
• ¾ tsp active dry yeast
• ½ Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp salt

This amount of ingredients produces 2 big loaves.

*If you don’t have bread flour, you can fully substitute it with all-purpose flour.

 

Preparation and Baking Directions:

Biga:

1. Sift two flours into a bowl
2. Add the yeast to the water; stir until well dissolved and creamy
3. Add the yeast-water mixture to the flour and mix well using a spoon for several minutes until smooth
4. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and leave for 8-12 hours for the rising and fermentation.

The biga will rise to double-thripple in size and will be full of bubbles. It will have a little sour yeast and flour aroma.

Dough:

1. Place the prepared biga into a stand mixer bowl. Attach a dough hook to the mixer
2. Add the yeast and sugar to the water; stir until well dissolved and creamy
3. Sift two flours into a bowl
4. Add the water mixture, the flours, milk and olive oil into the stand mixer bowl
5. On a low speed, mix until all ingredients well combined
6. Add the salt
7. Mix on a medium speed for about 10 minutes.
8. Place the dough into a large oiled bowl. The dough will be very sticky. Use a spatula to transfer the dough. Oil your fingertips with the olive oil and tip the top of the dough
9. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and leave to rise 2-3 hours
10. Sprinkle a baking sheet with flour. Helping with a spatula divide the dough into two parts and carefully slide each part to the floured baking sheet. Gently stretch each part out forming loaves, being careful not to lose bubbles
11. Sprinkle flour on the top of loaves. It will make a beautiful ciabatta crust. Cover the loaves with a cotton kitchen towel and let it rise for 1-2 hours. The loaves will look flat after rinsing, but they will rise up more in the oven
12. Preheat the oven to 425F and place the sheet with the loaves into the oven for 20 minutes for baking
13. Remove the sheet from the oven and immediately transfer the loaves to a cooling rack. Otherwise, the loaves would become moist from the bottom. Let them cool for at least 30 minutes

Now it’s time to try! The ciabatta bread is crispy outside and soft and airy inside, great with any meal!