Ciabatta: a wet dough you never knead, and those big holes
Everything you are taught about bread is reversed here: this dough is not kneaded, not shaped and barely touched. Ciabatta runs at 80 % water, which is to say too wet to pick up — and it is that water that keeps the dough loose enough for fermentation gases and steam to push it open from the inside, making the big glossy holes. Instead of kneading there are four folds half an hour apart, and instead of haste an overnight starter that supplies the flavour.
Your own work in that: 3 h.
- Overnight starter 720 min
- Folds 180 min
- Baking 30 min
- Cooling 40 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneMake the starter in the evening
Stir the flour, water and pinch of yeast into a thick, sticky paste — it does not need to be smooth. Cover and leave on the counter 12 to 16 hours. By morning it should be risen, full of bubbles and faintly sour, like yogurt. That little yeast over that many hours builds a flavour a fast dough has nowhere to get.
Ingredients: 200 g strong bread flour · 130 ml water · 1 pinch dried yeast
TipUse too much yeast in the starter and you will find a collapsed, sour puddle in the morning. A pinch here means a pinch: 0.5–1 g.
Morning: risen, bubbled, pleasantly sourMix the dough with a spoon
Add the flour, water, yeast and oil to the starter and stir with a spoon 2 minutes, until no dry flour remains. Add the salt last and stir it in. The dough will look like thick pancake batter, and that is the correct appearance — do not add flour, however much your hand wants to.
Ingredients: 300 g strong bread flour · 270 ml water · 3 g dried yeast · 10 g salt · 2 tbsp olive oil · 100 g flour for dusting
TipUse a bowl twice the size you think you need. The dough rises a lot, and folding it splashes.
Thick as pancake batter, exactly as intendedFold four times, half an hour apart
Wet your hand, slide it under one edge, stretch the dough upwards and fold it into the middle. Turn the bowl a quarter and repeat — four times around. Cover, and after 30 minutes do the same again. Four sets in all, two hours. Each time the dough is smoother and springier: this is gluten being built without your hands ever kneading it.
TipA wet hand does not stick to the dough. A bowl of water beside the counter saves more frustration than any tool.
Stretch up, fold to the middle, turn the bowlLet it prove
After the last fold, cover and leave 45 minutes. The dough should be puffed, full of bubbles visible under the surface and wobbling when you move the bowl. Meanwhile heat the oven to 250 °C with a tray or stone inside and an empty tin on the bottom shelf.
Tip out and cut, do not shape
Dust the counter generously with flour. Tip the dough out in one movement, helping it with a scraper, and flour the top. Pat it gently into a rectangle and cut it in two with the scraper. Do not knead, roll or shape loaves: every press expels the air you spent three hours making.
TipCiabatta means "slipper" in Italian and should look like one: flat, uneven, accidental. A neat, even loaf means the dough was squashed.
The scraper cuts, the hands don't pressBake with steam
Move the pieces on their paper onto the hot tray, sliding your hands underneath. Pour a cup of boiling water into the empty tin below and shut the door quickly. Bake 10 minutes at 250 °C, then drop to 220 °C and bake another 15–18 minutes, until golden and hollow-sounding when tapped underneath.
TipSteam keeps the crust soft for the first minutes, which lets the bread expand to the end. Without it the crust sets too early and the loaf stays flat.
A cup of boiling water below, door shut fastCool before cutting
Move to a rack and leave at least 40 minutes. Water is still leaving a hot loaf and the crumb is still setting; cut too early it will be gummy and collapse. Eat the same day, or slice and freeze.
Forty minutes on the rack, only then the knife
Before you start
What to do with it
Panini, bruschetta, dipping in oil and balsamic, or simply tomato and salt. Ciabatta has a neutral crumb, so it carries whatever you put on it.
Without the starter
You can skip the overnight stage and put all 7 g of yeast straight into the flour. You will get bread, but it will taste like a plain roll — the deeper, nutty, wheaty flavour comes from the overnight starter.
Where the holes come from
The big holes are neither luck nor accident: fermentation gases and steam from a very wet dough, trapped in a gluten network built by the folds. Any kneading after the rise destroys them.
Freezing
Freeze it split crosswise in a bag. Reheat straight from frozen: 8 minutes at 200 °C. The crust crisps up again.
