Ciabatta Recipe

Ciabatta is the loaf you make when you want the most dramatic open crumb a home oven can produce: big, glossy, irregular holes, a thin crackly crust, and a flat slipper shape (ciabatta means "slipper" in Italian) that is built for splitting into sandwiches or mopping a plate. It is the hardest lean bread in this library, and the difficulty is almost entirely about the water.

At 78% hydration the dough is genuinely wet — too slack and sticky to knead the conventional way without adding flour and ruining the crumb. That is the whole technique. Instead of kneading, you develop the gluten with a series of stretch-and-folds in the bowl, gathering the dough up and over itself every half hour or so during the bulk ferment. Each fold builds strength while keeping all that water in, and the gas you are trapping is what becomes those huge holes. The low 0.5% yeast keeps fermentation slow so flavor has time to develop.

The overnight biga (a stiff Italian pre-ferment) is the classic path and the one documented here: build the biga the night before, then mix, fold, and bake the next day. It adds a faint tang and a noticeably more open, more flavorful crumb than a straight dough.

Two things make or break it. First, resist the urge to add flour — a wet, slack, almost unmanageable dough is correct, and a bench scraper plus floured hands is how you handle it. Second, handle the proofed dough gently when you cut and transfer it; ciabatta is shaped by barely shaping it at all, letting the gas stay where it is. Bake hot with steam for the spring and the crust.