Sportsglutton wanted to make his delicious tuna melt the other day and wanted to buy some ciabatta bread. I stepped in and said “oh no, don’t BUY the bread, your AWESOME wife will bake you up a loaf” (plus the cost of bread can be a total rip off). I make bread often; this should be pretty much like making any other loaf, right?
Well it is easy, but no, it is not like making my regular loaf. The dough is much more wet and gooey… and you have to beat the living sh*! out of it.
Most of the recipes I found took two days, but I’m just not that patient. After a little poking around, I found this “quick” recipe for ciabatta - Jason’s Quick Coccodrillo Ciabatta Bread - at the Fresh Loaf and went from there.
The result:
The recipe worked out very well and is now in my regular bread roundup.
Some notes on the recipe:
- I would recommend using a stand mixer for this recipe – you really have to BEAT the bread “batter” which is loose and not kneadable. If you really need to work out a bicep and want to mix it by hand, make sure you have a very strong spoon and lots of time on your hands.
- After the initial mixing, I used my bread hook and turned my mixer up to 5 or about medium speed (for reference, I usually only have it set to 1 or 2 when making a regular loaf). For me, it took about 12 minutes for the dough to climb up the hook AND pull away from the bottom of the bowl.
- I forgot to flip the unbaked loaf over when I put two of the three loaves in the oven and it did not ruin those loaves. I would still try to remember to flip them next time I make it, just for a little more uniform bubble distribution.
One last photo – and a side note, I did not cut this loaf in the best place, but the air bubbles are typically larger in the loaves than seen in this photo.
Also, go check out Sportsglutton’s corn dog muffin recipe!
. It did have the large air holes and a great tender, but chewy crumb. The aggressive beating of the dough really develops the gluten. A bunch of the comments on the recipe at the Fresh Loaf include their own pictures, which show the airyness better than the photo I took. Definitely try it out, and let me know how it turns out for you.
Liz Gray (Craftyglutton)
