Ciabatta

Now this bread is pretty well known for being for sandwiches. Just saying the name seems to conjure up a mental image of a delicious flat bread sandwich with some honey mustard, lettuce, and filling of your choice. Well with this bread it makes sense. The recipe tries hard to prevent the dough from rising upwards and instead keeping with its flat form.

The starter for this dough was another Biga, this time for some reason the Biga I made was not as sticky and moist as the last one I made. It took on an almost doughy texture this time. Now the really scary part was the dough it self. Instead of being the normal bread dough that kind of like chewed gum. Ciabatta dough is very loose, very moist, and very sticky. It has a tendency to stick to everything which made it rather hard for me to work it by hand. But I heeded the author's warning about the dough's properties and quickly kneaded it adding as little flour as possible then set it to rise in an oiled bowl.

Now the really hard part came after its first doubling. I had to form this large sticky (though not as bad as it was) mass into four equal flats for baking. Using my metal dough scraper I cut it into the four sections and set to work. After another 90 minute rise time it was ready to put into the oven in sets of two.

Here is the finished product:

The bread is honestly as advertised and would be great for sandwiches; it was fantastic with just a little bit of honey.