This Week's Baking: Ciabatta

I made sourdough ciabatta for the first time this week. The process was a but different - the whole rise (apart from the last hour or so) was in the fridge,and prior to that the dough was stirred rather than kneaded - it was VERY wet dough.

My shaping left quite a bit to be desired, unfortunately. Only the middle one really looked like a proper loaf.

I cooked the loaves on the bottom shelf of the oven with Tennant's pizza stone under the tray and a water bath on the top rack. Not sure how much difference the water bath made (it's meant to made the crust crustier I think?) but the bottoms browner nicely! Sinceour oven heats from the bottom, though, the tops didn't colour at all in the short baking time (15 minutes). Luckily I came up with a solution - rearrange the racks and then put the loaves under the grill for five minutes or so until browner. It worked a treat.

The ciabatta was SO delicious. And check out those air holes!

I didn't intentionally cut it this way so it would look like a pair of lungs... These things happen to me sometimes.