Ciabatta
A very wet, slack, minimally shaped loaf whose open irregular crumb is a direct consequence of a hydration most doughs could not hold — and of being handled as little as possible.
Also called ciabatta bread (INTERNATIONAL), italian slipper bread (INTERNATIONAL)
Ciabatta is a lean wheat dough taken to a hydration high enough that it barely holds a shape, developed mostly by time and folding rather than by kneading, and moved to the oven with as little handling as the baker can manage.
THE CRUMB IS THE POINT AND THE HANDLING IS HOW IT SURVIVES. A very wet dough forms large, irregular gas cells during fermentation, and every action that presses, rolls or degases the dough destroys them permanently. Shaping a ciabatta the way a tin loaf is shaped produces a tin loaf’s crumb from a ciabatta’s dough. This is why the traditional method is closer to cutting the dough than to shaping it.
IT IS A YOUNG BREAD, not an old one. Its documented development is twentieth-century and commercial — an Italian response to imported sandwich loaves — which is unusual enough to be worth stating, because almost every other bread in this section is older than the written record of it. BakeHQ does not name an inventor or a single town of origin; accounts differ and the claim is not one this site is sourced to make.
THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCE for a domestic baker is that ciabatta rewards a strong flour and punishes impatience in a specific way. The dough needs enough protein to hold that much water in a network at all, and it needs the fermentation to have built structure before it is handled, because there is no later stage at which strength can be added.
What it should be like
- Crumb texture
- Very open and irregular, with large glossy cells
- Crust
- Thin, crisp and blistered rather than thick
- Handling
- Slack to the point of being difficult; deliberately so
Typical hydration
75–85% of flour weight (baker's percentage)
A working range read from the style’s defining characteristic rather than from a published specification. Formulas vary widely and higher figures are achievable with strong flour and a practised hand.
InferredStanley P. Cauvain, Springer
Where it comes from
Traditional account
A long-standing account of how something originated or was done. Recorded as tradition, which is not the same as recorded as fact.
Italian, and unusually for a bread its development is recent and commercial — a twentieth-century response to imported sandwich loaves. Accounts of exactly where and by whom differ and BakeHQ does not choose between them.
More in baking history and culture.
Why a flat ciabatta is usually a handling fault, not a proving fault
The commonest complaint about home ciabatta is that it spreads rather than rising, and the reflex is to blame the proof.
More often the dough never had the strength to hold its own water. At this hydration the gluten network is doing something close to its limit, and it gets there through fermentation time and folding rather than through kneading — a folded dough gains strength at each fold in a way an unfolded one does not. A dough that was mixed, left, and then tipped out will spread, whatever the clock said.
The second cause is the transfer. A very slack dough loaded slowly, stretched on the way, or dropped onto a cold surface loses height before the oven can set it. This is the one bread where the last thirty seconds before it goes in genuinely decide the result.
Related
Part of
A lean wheat dough whose entire character is a gluten network holding an unusual amount of water.
Things that go wrong
A lean yeasted dough, so the whole fermentation cause set applies.
The one fault a ciabatta is most often judged to have, and usually a strength problem rather than a proving one.
The dough is too sticky to handle
At this hydration a dough that feels unmanageable is the normal state, and the record says when it stops being.
A slack dough loaded badly loses its height in the first minutes, which is exactly what this model is about.
Overfermentation at high hydration is the classic route to a ciabatta that spreads.
The crust is too hard, too thick or not crisp
A thin blistered crust is part of the definition, so failing to get one is a fault here.
The bread smells or tastes of alcohol, yeast or vinegar
A long fermentation at high hydration can run past flavour into alcohol.
What this product needs done
Structure building
Nothing else holds this much water in a shape.
Gas retention
The large irregular cells are the network holding gas it was strong enough not to lose.
Hydration
The defining variable of the style.
Fermentation substrate
Yeast needs something to ferment.
Characteristic ingredients
Strong flour is what holds this much water in a network.
The defining variable.
Flavour and gluten strength.
A small dose over a long fermentation.
Techniques involved
Where the strength is built.
The only practical way to develop a dough this wet.
Barely — the aim is to handle it as little as possible.