Ciabatta

Ciabatta Recipe

I can’t think of a way to describe the fabulous and unusual taste of ciabatta, except to say that once you’ve eaten it, you’ll never think of white bread in the same way again. Everyone who tries this bread loves it. “Ciabatta” means “slipper” in Italian; one glance at the short, stubby bread will make it clear how it was named. Ciabatta bread is a remarkable combination of rustic country texture and elegant tantalizing taste. It is much lighter than its homely shape would indicate, and the porous, chewy interior is enclosed in a slightly crunchy crust that is veiled with flour. Eat it for breakfast or slice an entire ciabatta horizontally and stuff it with salami and cheese.

This ciabatta recipe should be made in a stand mixer, although it can also be made in a food processor. I have made it by hand, but I wouldn’t recommend it. (You can’t really put the dough on the table for the entire duration of kneading because the natural inclination is to add lots of flour to this very sticky dough, and pretty soon you wouldn’t have a ciabatta…unless you are willing to knead the wet, sticky mass between your hands–in midair–turning, folding, and twisting it rather like taffy, your hands covered with dough.) Resist the temptation to add flour, and follow the instructions. The dough will feel utterly unfamiliar and probably a bit scary. And that’s not the only unusual feature: the shaped loaves are flat and look definitely unpromising. Even when they are puffed after the second rise, you may feel certain you’ve done it all wrong. Don’t give up. The ciabatta bread rises nicely in the oven.–Carol Field

LC Bereft of a Baking Stone? Note

If, like many of us, you haven’t yet brought yourself to ante up for a dearly priced baking stone, try flipping a large cast-iron skillet upside down and baking on its bottom. It ought to do the trick. It has for us.

Special Equipment: Two baking stones

Ciabatta Recipe

  • Quick Glance
  • 30 M
  • 4 H, 20 M
  • Makes 4 loaves

Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
  • 5 tablespoons warm milk
  • 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons water, at room temperature (if using a food processor, use cold water)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 very full cups (17.5 ounces / 500 grams) biga, rested for 12 hours
  • 3 3/4 cups (17.5 ounces / 500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for the work surface
  • 1 tablespoon (0.5 ounces / 15 grams) salt
  • Cornmeal

Directions

  • 1. If making the ciabatta in a stand mixer: Stir the yeast into the milk in a mixer bowl; let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Add the water, oil, and biga and mix with the paddle until blended. Mix the flour and salt, add to the bowl, and mix for 2 to 3 minutes. Change to the dough hook and knead for 2 minutes at low speed, then 2 minutes at medium speed. Knead briefly on a well-floured surface, adding as little flour as possible, until the dough is still sticky but beginning to show evidence of being velvety, supple, springy, and moist.

    If making the ciabatta in a food processor: Stir the yeast into the milk in a large bowl; let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Add 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons of cold water, the oil, and the biga and mix, squeezing the biga between your fingers to break it up. Place the flour and salt in the food processor fitted with the dough blade and pulse several times to sift the ingredients. With the machine running, pour the biga mixture through the feed tube and process until the dough comes together. Process about 45 seconds longer to knead. Finish kneading on a well-floured surface until the dough is still sticky but beginning to show signs of being velvety, supple, moist, and springy.
  • 2. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled, about 1 1/4 hours. The dough should be full of air bubbles, very supple, elastic, and sticky.
  • 3. Cut the dough into 4 equal pieces on a well-floured surface. Roll each piece into a cylinder, then stretch each cylinder into a rectangle, pulling with your fingers to get each piece long and wide enough. It should be approximately 10 by 4 inches.
  • 4. Generously flour 4 pieces of parchment paper placed on peels or upside-down baking sheets. Place each loaf, seam side up, on a piece of parchment. Dimple the loaves vigorously with your fingertips or knuckles so that they won’t rise too much. The dough will look heavily pockmarked, but it is very resilient, so don’t be concerned. Cover the loaves loosely with damp towels and let rise until puffy but not doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The loaves will look flat and definitely unpromising, but don’t give up; they will rise more in the oven.
  • 5. Approximately 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 425ºF (218ºC) and slide your baking stones on the center rack to heat.
  • 6. Just before baking the ciabatta, sprinkle the stones with cornmeal. Carefully invert each loaf onto a stone. If the dough sticks a bit to the parchment, just gently work it free from the paper. If you need to, you can leave the paper and remove it 10 minutes later. Bake for a total of 20 to 25 minutes, spraying the oven three times with water in the first 10 minutes. Transfer the ciabatta loaves to wire racks to cool.
Hungry for more? Chow down on these:

Comments
Comments
  1. Testers Choice says:

    [Elie Nassar] The recipe makes wonderful ciabatta with a crisp, thin crust and an airy crumb. I could easily eat a whole “slipper” by myself with nothing more than olive oil. It’s great to see a baking recipe with weight measurements for all the ingredients. That is what I used, and the loaves came out perfect. Note though that four of these would usually not fit on a baking stone together. I had to bake them two at a time, but at 20 minutes or so for the baking time, that is not such a big hassle.

  2. Testers Choice says:

    [Megan M.] This ciabatta was a delight to make! I loved the feel of the dough when I was briefly kneading it before the first rise. Initially I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to determine when the dough was velvety, springy, and moist, and that I’d add too much flour. In fact, it was easy to tell when it was ready. I ran out of all-purpose flour and had to add about 150 grams of white whole wheat flour. As far as I can tell, it didn’t make much of a difference in the finished product. The ciabatta baked up nicely on a regular baking sheet (I don’t have a baking stone). I threw ice cubes onto a pan in the bottom of the oven to get steam. I let one pan with two loaves rise for about 1 1/2 hours and the other for closer to two hours. Both sets of loaves were very nice, but the two-hour rise resulted in fuller loaves with a chewier crumb. It would be helpful to have weights for all of the ingredients, as in the biga recipe). It was very satisfying to make this ciabatta, and the results boosted my confidence in baking yeast breads.

  3. Testers Choice says:

    [Linda Pacchiano] This recipe makes four wonderful loaves of bread. The instructions are letter-perfect and could be followed by even novice bakers. The dough is “sticky” but not really that difficult to handle. As warned in the recipe, my parchment paper did not release when I placed the loaves in the oven, but after a few minutes the paper pulled off easily. It was this attention to detail in the recipe that made it so “user-friendly.” The flavor of this bread is fairly mild because the starter (biga) is not fermented for very long. It’s this delicate flavor, enveloped in a nice chewy crust, that makes the ciabatta so appealing. I will definitely be making this bread again. Probably the next time I will have the biga already made in my freezer, allowing me to make the bread all in one day.

  4. Testers Choice says:

    [Lauren P.] I absolutely love the crispy crust and large holes common to this Italian “slipper” loaf, so i was most excited to get started. The directions were explicit and any questions or issues along the way seem to be addressed. As I was making the very sticky “biga,” or sponge, it suddenly seemed familiar and I immediately recognized an old friend in The Italian Baker! This book has remained on my shelf while other books have come and gone several times over during the years. This bread, because it has relatively little yeast and is a slow riser, is a great Sunday afternoon side project — a Superbowl Sunday idea for those of us not glued to the game? The resulting bread has the much-desired crispy crust and soft and “holey” inside, ready to be eaten warm with some wonderful grassy olive oil or sliced lengthwise for some delicious paninis! Most of the time involved is related to hovering over the rises…and not with the actual ingredients, so it’s perfect for a cold afternoon or game day. A winner.

  5. Testers Choice says:

    [Raye Tiedemann] Already had The Italian Baker cookbook from years ago, and I am so happy to have kept it. I have made some sweet breads using its sponge, which were just wonderful. This recipe sure didn’t disappoint, either. I made the biga, which was a snap, and left it to bubble and triple. I refrigerated it until the next morning and used all but a little bit, which I put into another recipe. It’s a really soft, sticky dough, so I put it on parchment and let it rise. I have a pizza stone, and when it was time to bake it does work to slide it off onto the stone. I put ice cubes on the bottom of the oven to create steam instead of misting the loaves. They baked up to a really nice chewy golden brown. This is a wonderful recipe, and I’m sure we can make some wonderful sandwiches out of these. First, though, I’m going to share with my daughter. Love it!!!

  6. RisaG says:

    I have the first version of the book. I love it. I have made Ciabatta before. The dough is really wet. Hard to form into a loaf. Fun to make though. Have been thinking about making Ciabatta for a while now. Haven’t made it in years. This is big inspiration. Hmmm…wonder what I am baking on Sunday??? Ciabatta, of course!

    • Renee Schettler Rossi, LC Editor-in-Chief says:

      We love inspiring folks to such noble aspirations, RisaG. Do let us know how it goes…

  7. Vic Y says:

    We are just munching on our bread now. This recipe really worked well. My loaves cooked in 18 minutes and I had no issues with the paper sticking, though I used flour and semolina on the paper. Thanks for a great recipe.

  8. Nick says:

    Fantastic recipe–particularly the final proof on baking paper/flip over technique. Made four loaves in our wood-fired oven and all gone within 24 hours. Only question I have is that the loaves (while delicious) didn’t really have the large holes and really chewy, chewy texture I would associate with ciabatta. I’ve seen other recipes that have a higher moisture content than this one. Any suggestions?

    • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

      Nick, I checked with one of our veteran recipe testers and cooking instructors, Cindi Kruth, and she offered the following explanation… “I’ve made a fairly traditional holy ciabatta with this recipe. I don’t recall the percentage water offhand but it is possible it is slightly less than some other ciabatta recipes. There is always a tendency to add a little extra flour with such a wet dough. In any case, the reader is correct in assuming a little more water will result in more and/ or larger holes. I don’t get too hung up on that myself. If it matters to the reader, he can try more water or less flour. It’ll be pretty sticky and rather slack, but there’s nothing wrong with that. That may also produce more chewiness, but that could also be the result of flour used–the protein content especially. Brands vary. Even with one brand you get some variation. King Arthur is pretty consistent, store brands often less so. There’s also a variation in the way cooks measure the flour, so sometimes the proportions are off slightly.” And so Nick, it seems a little experimentation is in order…let me know if you have additional questions, and also check in with us to let us know how it goes next time around…

  9. Angelina says:

    I am making this recipe for Ciabatta loaf for the very first time tomorrow Saturday morning. Thought I would make a half recipe first to test and experiment and to familiarize myself with the procedure and art of making it. My question now is with the proving time if doing a half recipe, do you still follow the same hours as stated in the recipe? Would appreciate your help on this. Thanks muchly.

    • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

      Yes, Angelina, you still need to allow the dough the same amount of time to rest and rise, even if making just half a batch…or perhaps just a few minutes shy of the full time. Let us know how it goes…

      • Angelina says:

        Thanks for the response. I am baking it right now, the batch that I made was not like the one pictured above. It did not have big holes. I don’t know what went wrong. ):

        • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

          Angelina, we’ve found that with many bread recipes–including this one–the type and amount of flour can make a substantial difference in the resulting texture. I believe you’re baking in Australia, yes? We’ve run into this issue before with the difference in brands of flours. Baking can be such a science, and as noted in the response to Nick just above, any slight tweak to the ratio of flour to water can wreak havoc with the holiness, so to speak, of the ciabatta. This dough tends to be a little sticky, so I’m wondering, is there a chance that you added a little more flour to compensate? And do tell, how was the taste and texture?

          • Angelina says:

            Yes, I am from Australia. And I use the organic unbleached all purpose four. I followed the recipe and no, I did not add more flour and followed what was in the recipe.

            The taste and texture were no doubt to compromise. Great taste and chewy texture except I did not get much holes. I will try and make it again until I master the art of making the ciabatta bread. Both my hubby and myself enjoyed the bread for lunch. :)

            Thank you so much for your help. I will keep you posted. Cheers!!!

            • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

              Thanks for your response, Angelina. I didn’t mean to implicate you, I just had to ask, as often we receive messages from readers saying “You know, this cake wasn’t as rich as you said it would be…” and then it turns out they substituted skim milk for the whole milk and used only egg whites and snuck in applesauce in place of butter…but it’s lovely to hear that you are undeterred. I’m nudging one of our most experienced bakers with your query, as I know she’s made this recipe time and again, and will get back to you with her response. In the meantime, I am so relieved to hear that you are both undeterred and sated from a slice (or three) at lunch.

              • Angelina says:

                Hi there,

                Well, yesterday I made a bigger batch of the Biga to keep in the freezer. Once we finish the first batch I made, I will make it again, hopefully I can achieve the big holes the same as shown in the book above. :)

                • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

                  Angelina, we’re sending you hole-y ciabatta mojo. And we’ll be waiting to hear how it goes…in the meantime, I heard back from our resident ciabatta baker (as well as recipe tester and baking instructor), Cindi Kruth, and here’s what she had to say (don’t worry, it’s quite reassuring…) about your experience: “There is enough variation just in flour and humidity to affect the size of holes and crumb of the loaf. Especially with organic flours, which tend to less finely milled. I don’t know a thing about Australian flour, although I do know European flours are quite different from U.s. brands. This is not generally an issue for most recipes, but for cakes and breads, the results can vary enough to be noticeable. Also, bread recipes can never be reproduced exactly. There are too many variables to get it the same every time in every kitchen with every possible brand and type of flour. You get used to that if you bake a lot. Even artisan bakeries produce some variations. But this is a solid recipe. I’ve done it several times. No two loaves have been exactly alike. She may just need to experiment a little.” So have faith, Angelina! And please report back…

  10. Steve says:

    I have the loaves resting right now before they go in the oven. I made the biga with water, but used whey instead of water when mixing together the actual dough; hopefully the higher protein content will help it to form a strong internal structure to hold all those awesome bubbles in.

    I have to say, every time I’ve tried to make ciabatta, the big holes have all been at the top, so I find the idea of flipping them right before baking really attractive!

    One question. This recipe was not unusually messy EXCEPT for the part where I needed to get the dough onto my work surface and knead for a couple of minutes. I covered everything with a ridiculous amount of flour, but still my hands ended up a sticky mess PLUS the dough was really too slack to be able to “knead” by hand anyway (it ended up being repeated “folding”). What is the benefit of the step where the bread is kneaded by hand? Is it to incorporate a small amount of flour?

    I’ll post again after baking!

    • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

      Steve, we’ll be standing by to hear how it went! Clever thinking on the whey, curious to learn what effect that wrought. In the meantime, we’re reaching out to our resident baking experts to answer your query about the kneading….

      • Steve says:

        The bread turned out fabuloso. I’m not experienced with baking directly on a stone, so I inverted the loaves onto parchment before sliding the parchment onto the stone. I made the recipe-specified four loaves, and they came out of the oven less than 24 hours ago. We now have about 1 1/2 loaves left, after a whole bunch was consumed by snacking and an entire loaf went to pan bagna last night.

        One of the things that really impresses me about this recipe is that it uses all-purpose flour but returns such an authentic result. I would have expected 00 flour to be necessary for this kind of bread—I was even considering ordering some “rinforzata” flour specifically for ciabatta. Thank you for saving me a bunch of money. :)

        I will be making this regularly.

        • Steve says:

          Oh, and just so that I’ve said it: massive holes all over the place. Something came out of *my* oven that has those cobweb-looking strands of bread that go across the huge holes! I’ve only ever seen those come out of commercial ovens, from professional bakers. It’s a pretty awesome feeling to know that now I can make ciabatta for around $0.40 per loaf that my wife and I both agree tops the store-bought stuff at $3.50 per loaf.

          • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

            Wonderful, Steve! Just wonderful. And while there’s a lot to be said for a reliable recipe, Steve, there’s also much to be said for the deft touch of the baker, especially when we’re talking about bread.

        • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

          Steve, words can’t convey just how relieved and triumphant we feel right now on your behalf! We’re also feeling rather impressed and amused by you having such una buona forchetta, that is, a good appetite, for those loaves of ciabatta. And rightly so—you earned every single memorable mouthful of that bread. You are quite, quite welcome.

  11. My biga for this recipe came out very nice. I had 540g so I just put it all in the bowl since it was such a small amount over. In adding the yeast to the milk it did not want to foam up like it does in water so I added a teaspoon of sugar to help it. This yeast comes from a large batch kept in the freezer and worked perfectly just last week. It doesn’t expire for a year.

    My dough was extremely wet, not really anything you could knead by hand. So I used my bench scraper and did the best I could without adding too much flour. The first rise was great and I had a nice bubbly dough. I shaped 2 loves and 12 squares to use as buns. I just flattened the dough into a square and cut them and moved them to parchment. Again this dough was more like a large sticky mass. Nothing you could actually knead into any kind of shape. After 2 hours I baked my breads. The first one that I flipped over lost all its shape and baked up as a flat bread. The remainder I just baked on their parchment. None of them rose anymore once they were in the oven. They taste good but are really extremely flat.

    We love ciabatta and I would make it all the time if I could perfect it. My other breads come out really nice.

    • Beth Price, LC Director of Recipe Testing says:

      Hi Sharon, I asked our baking expert about your questions and she offered several suggestions. First, for many bread recipes the excess amount of starter wouldn’t matter much. Here it may very well make a difference for two reasons. First, this is a very wet dough and a little extra hydration (the biga being even wetter, at about 79%, than the finished dough, at about 73%) may slacken the dough too much. Second the difference may be more than it seems. The biga recipe should yield 590 grams, as opposed to 540 grams. If the proportions of flour were off, then the biga was even more hydrated than it should have been.

      The amount of water in the dough does make it harder to handle. It also makes it require less kneading. It does, however, require some kneading to develop enough structure to trap air on both the first and second fermentations. The shaping involves a little rolling too which helps with structure. Pouring the dough out and cutting it wouldn’t form any sort of “gluten cloak” to help contain the air bubbles. It sounds from this description that the dough may have been deflated when shaped. They ARE pretty flat and the second rise doesn’t get them to double, but they should be puffy; it should be obvious there’s air trapped within.

      Hope this helps!

  12. Rebecca says:

    Hi! If you wanna make it by hand you have to knead it by using a bench scraper and smearing it with a slight wiggling motion on your counter. Then you scrape it into a ball and do it again. It works really well, you begin to see the threads of gluten forming. I actually prefer it to regular kneading…maybe it takes me back to being a little kid and playing with messy things!

  13. drew says:

    Hi, just a quick comment:

    The directions say to mix the biga, water, and oil all at the same time in the stand mixer.

    Well, I have a normal/small sized mixer and ran into a problem. Even on the lowest speed, water was flying out of the bowl due to the biga sloshing it around. So I had to pour it all out and add it in slowly, which is what my intuition told me.

  14. Rachel says:

    So, I followed the instructions exactly, and ended up with a very elastic dough that turned into a somewhat dense bread that produced few holes and didn’t brown. Any ideas what went wrong?

    • Beth Price says:

      Hi Rachel, it sounds like maybe a tad too much flour was incorporated during the kneading process. The dough should be wet and a bit sloppy, definitely not your normal bread dough.

    • Steve says:

      Rachel,

      The only time that this bread turned out unacceptably dense for me was when I was making it with sourdough (instead of baker’s yeast) and I allowed it to overproof for one of the steps. Since the yeast wasn’t vigorous enough during the final rise, it couldn’t produce enough gas inside the dough to puff up very much. It ended up an absolute brick. If you’re using baker’s yeast, the same thing can happen if you allow it to overproof.

      Also, transferring the loaves to the stone without degassing them too much is really tough. I don’t “invert” them off parchment paper like the recipe says——frankly, I don’t understand how that’s even done. I let them do the final rise in a quickbread pan that’s LOADED with semolina to prevent sticking, and then turn them out of that onto the preheated stone (likewise loaded with semolina). That’s the way I’ve found that gets them onto the stone with the least disturbance for the bubbles. If you’re transferring them to the stone with too much force, it could affect the openness of the crumb.

      Hope this helps.

      Steve

      • Renee Schettler Rossi says:

        Steve, many thanks for the tremendously helpful insights. Greatly appreciate you taking the time and trouble to share. Love benefitting from everyone’s shared experience here….

  15. Druz says:

    Is it possible to refrigerate 2 of the loaves after step 3 ? I would like to bake 2 today and the remaining tomorrow.

  16. Vice-Versa says:

    I tried this recipe, but halved the proportions in two as we are now only two at home. I made the biga yesterday night and the dough this morning before going to work. All went quite as described but though the dough was very sticky as I took it out of my food processor, it was no more after the kneading (I didn’t add any flour, just powdered my table). I put it in the fridge (as I have no time in the morning to let it proof and bake it before leaving for my office). When I got back home at the end of the afternoon, I took it out of the fridge, shaped it (as I could) and let it proof again. It didn’t rise a lot but when I put it in my oven, it rose very much (too much I think). The bread is good but has nothing to do with your picture as the crumb is tight with very small holes.

    Please excuse my bad english as I’m French ;-)

    • Beth Price says:

      Hi Vice-Versa, I spoke with Cindi, one of our professional bakers. She thinks that the retarding (refrigeration) and second proofing may have allowed for extra fermentation, some escape of gasses, and the decrease in the size of the air pockets. This is a slack dough and if all the factors don’t come together the texture will be different. Not bad, but like the you indicated, a tighter crumb.

  17. info says:

    Thank you for this. Just hours after looking. So does the milk make it authentic?

    • Beth Price says:

      Hi “info”, the authenticity comes from the biga starter and resultant very wet dough. Let us know if you try it!

Have something to say?

Then tell us. Have a picture you'd like to add to your comment? Send it along. Covet one of those spiffy pictures of yourself to go along with your comment? Get a free Gravatar. And as always, please take a gander at our comment policy before posting.

Daily Subscription

Enter your email address and get all of our updates sent to your inbox the moment they're posted. Be the first on your block to be in the know.

Preview daily e-mail

Weekly Subscription

Hate tons of emails? Do you prefer info delivered in a neat, easy-to-digest (pun intended) form? Then enter your email address for our weekly newsletter.

Preview weekly e-mail