Ciabatta

I am moving along in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, on to Chiabatta. Yesterday, I made the poolish version of the ciabatta. I found it to be the most challenging of the recipes so far. I have no experience with wet dough and do not think that mine was wet enough. It was my first couche. Not really a challenging idea, a nice blanket for your dough to rest in. The hearth baking was interesting. Any time cracking the oven glass is a possible consequence of your actions, you know you are playing with fire, or heat. The bread was delicious. I called for an official tasting after the appropriate cooling down period and before we knew it, a loaf was missing. And we could not blame the dog this time.

After my first attempt, I went onto youtube and studied other people's posts about folding. It is clear that my dough was not as wet as theirs. Today, I am going to try the ciabatta, biga version with some olive oil.