Sourdough ciabatta

Here's a recipe for a wonderful Italian bread called ciabatta. We will cook it without industrial yeast - the dough will contain wheat sourdough. The result is a fluffy, large-porous bread with a moist crumb and a crispy, dense crust. It can be served both with first courses and with a cup of coffee or tea.

How to grow wheat sourdough on your own at home, I told you and showed you almost a year ago. If you have rye sourdough, you can easily overfeed it into wheat sourdough - see the detailed instructions. From the specified amount of ingredients used, 2 fairly large ciabattas (250 grams each) are obtained, but if you wish, you can bake one large or portioned mini ciabatta.

Ingredients

• Wheat leaven (270 grams)
• Wheat flour of the highest grade (250 grams)
• Water (160 milliliters)
• Vegetable oil (50 milliliters)
• Salt (1 teaspoon)

Directions

1. To make this simple homemade bread, let's take wheat sourdough, premium wheat flour, water, refined vegetable (I use sunflower, but it's better to take olive - at that time I just ran out of it) oil and salt.
2. We take 270 grams of ripe wheat sourdough and transfer it to a container of a suitable size, in which we plan to knead the dough.
3. Add 160 milliliters of lukewarm water and mix everything thoroughly so that the leaven is evenly dispersed throughout the entire liquid mass.
4. Sift wheat flour of the highest grade (250 grams) and mix with salt (1 level teaspoon). Add all the flour to the leaven diluted in water.
5. Stir all the ingredients with your hand or spoon to make a very, very soft dough. It sticks a lot to your hands - it should be so. Cover the bowl with a towel or cling film and leave the dough at room temperature for 10 minutes.
6. During this time, the leaven will already start working and the dough will swell slightly.
7. We mix it (it is most convenient to use a scraper for this purpose, since the dough is very sticky).
8. Then add a little vegetable oil, mixing it into the dough with your hands. We transfer the dough to a dry (without flour and oil) work surface and knead with our hands until the dough starts to move away from the table and peel off from the hands. This will take at least 15 minutes, so use a kneader with a hook attachment whenever possible.
9. Grease the bowl with a small amount of vegetable oil and put the dough into it. We tighten the dishes with cling film or cover with a towel and leave the dough to ferment at room temperature for 2-2.5 hours. During this time, you will need to fold the dough every 40 minutes. I clearly showed how to fold the dough in the recipe for Moscow rolls - see steps 7-12.
10. This is what the leavened ciabatta dough looks like after the first 40 minutes.
11. Once folded, it will begin to take shape and not immediately spread throughout the bowl.
12. And then we put the dough before the third, after which we put it to rest in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours. Sprinkle the table with flour (quite generously) and spread the dough on it.
13. Gently stretch the dough into a square or rectangular layer, being careful not to touch it from above. Now you need to fold this same layer three times, that is, like a euro letter. Visually divide the dough into 3 equal parts and place one on top of the middle third.
14. Place the remaining edge on top of the two. That is, a rectangle is obtained, consisting of three layers.
15. Similarly, we add it three times. One edge - to the middle.
16. Then the third on top of the double layer. It turned out to be a plump square.
17. Lightly grease the bowl with oil (its amount, as in the case of the first greasing of the dishes, I did not indicate in the ingredients) and put the dough with the seam down. Close with a lid or tighten with foil and put in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours (it is most convenient to leave the dough in the cold overnight).
18. I just forgot to take a picture of the next step - what the dough looks like after the allotted time in the cold. It will blur, double in volume and be permeated with large and smaller air bubbles. We generously sprinkle the table with wheat flour and carefully spread the dough on it, trying to maintain its porosity and airiness. That is, try not to forcibly scrape it out of the bowl, but just tilt it and let the dough crawl out slowly, slightly helping it against the walls.
19. Powder the surface of the dough with flour and gently stretch it into a not very thin layer. See how many huge bubbles are in the dough? This is what distinguishes ciabatta from other types of bread. Depending on the desired number of products, we divide the dough into parts - best of all with a scraper, but you can also use a knife. I will have two fairly large ciabatts.
20. Take parchment paper or a suitable towel and dust it with flour very generously. We use a towel made of natural fabric (best of all, linen) - we do not just sprinkle it, but rub it in flour. If you don't, then the dough will stick. We shift both pieces of dough to the prepared surface, along the way slightly stretching them in length.
21. We make a cradle for our future loaves - we prop up with rolls of towels at both ends and in the middle we also make a separation. Cover the ciabatta with a towel and let it rest for 1.5-2 hours at room temperature.
22. Do not forget to cover the blanks with foil or a towel to prevent airing.
23. It is clear that the dough is not particularly elastic and the workpieces will not rise much, but they will noticeably round up and will not creep. Heat the oven about 20 minutes before the end of the rise of the dough. We remove the sides that served as a cradle.
24. Gently transfer the future bread to a baking sheet covered with baking paper, with the bottom side up. That is, the side on which the blanks lay will become the top.
25. We will bake the ciabatta in sourdough in a steam bath, that is, we will put a wide bowl with hot water on the bottom of the oven. When baked at high temperatures, this water will boil and evaporate to create the necessary moisture. It is due to this that the bread will grow. We bake the blanks in a steam bath for about 30-35 minutes at 220 degrees.
26. When the bread is ready, take it out and cool it on the wire rack. We give the ciabatta a rest for about 20 minutes and you can enjoy delicious Italian bread.
27. Try this simple and easy bread recipe that will pleasantly surprise you with a truly excellent result. Every cook can make homemade ciabatta bread. The main thing is to have on hand a wheat sourdough that can be grown or overfed from rye. Cook for health, my dear bakers!