Making Ciabatta
Monday, November 24th, 2008
I’ve been making bread for a few years now and recently I was in the local supermarket when they announced over the audio system that we ought to try their inhouse ciabatta because “unlike our standard bread that we rise for 15 minutes, our ciabatta take two hours!”.
The rising process (called “proving”) is where the yeast eats some of the sugars in the flour and, in so doing, produces the gas that puffs the bread up. This fermentation process also adds flavour and the longer you leave it fermenting the richer the flavour.
I don’t want to sound like a bread snob here but I’ve tried supermarket ciabatta before and it’s really not ciabatta at all. Which is a crying shame really because ciabatta is one of my favourites and it’s remarkably simple to make. It is very time consuming though (the first of three provings takes 12-15 hours) which is why supermarkets can’t afford to make a proper loaf.
Ciabatta gets its name from the Italian word for ‘slipper’. Not as romantic-sounding eh? Still, it’s a wonderful bread.
If you’ve never made it before, please, give it a go; you’ll never be able to eat supermarket ciabatta again. Here’s how you make it:
