Ciabatta recipe

There’s nothing like freshly baked bread and my ciabatta recipe is a hit in my home with my children especially!

I’ve always enjoyed cooking but baking for me is a little stress reliever. While making my ciabatta recipe I think of nothing else but the dough and everything else just drifts away.

My simple ciabatta recipe is really versatile and can be used to make rolls or loaves, but I tend to make a mixture of both.  

Ingredients for 12 rolls or 4 loaves

500g	strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
1 1/2 tsp	salt
14g	instant yeast
425 ml	water, tepid
45 ml	olive oil

(Example ingredient amounts given, adjust accordingly to your requirements)

Method

• Put the flour, salt and yeast along with 350ml of the water in a food mixer with dough hook and mix on a low setting for 5 minutes.
• Slowly begin to add the remaining water and continue to mix for a further 8-10 minutes on a medium speed. The dough should be quite wet and stretchy when pulled.
• Add a little olive oil to a bowl or plastic container and add the dough. Cover with film and leave in a warm place to rise. You’re looking for it to double in size and this should take roughly an hour.
• Heavily flour your work surface. Tip out the dough and coat the top of the dough with flour.
• Without kneading the dough, cut the dough into equal size portions depending if you want to make loaves or rolls
• If you want to make rolls, the easiest way I’ve found is to divide the dough into 4 equal portions, and then sub-divide them again.
• To make rolls, make sure your hands are floured, then take a piece of dough and start to form the ball by folding the sides into the centre, flip over and place onto a lined and lightly floured baking sheet making sure to dust off any excess flour from the roll.
• If you’re making loaves, flour your hands and stretch the dough into long batons.
• When all the loaves or rolls are shaped, leave them for a further 20 minutes to finish proving them.
• In the meantime pre-heat your oven to 220°C fan/425°F.
• Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until golden brown, but if you’re baking rolls, turn the loaves and bake for a further 5 minutes.

Notes

• This is a really wet dough so make sure you flour your work surface really well.
• You may benefit from using a dough scraper to divide the dough to portion it, link below.
• This dough also makes great pizza bases too!