So for years I was led to believe that you need a big old kitchen mixer to make Ciabatta at home.
However, I must be a sucker because that is not true. All you really do need is a bowl and a
spoon. That's it. So for this recipe all you need is a nice big bowl and a wooden spoon. This is
a no knead recipe so no machine. All you need is time. Now our first ingredient is bread flour. Now
hear me out. I want you to use bread flour because bread flour is strong and it gives you, uh, those
lovely big bubbles and strengthens the chew of your bread. And that's Ciabatta should be.
If you want to use all purpose flour then yes, you can use the same amount. However,
bread flour is preferable for a dough like this. So get that into your bowl. Next,
we're going to add in a small bit of whole wheat flour. This is a finely ground whole wheat flour.
We're going to add that in there. It does add nice flavor, little bit nuttiness to
your bread. Next we're going to add in some salt. For obvious reasons. All bread needs salt.
And then a little bit of instant yeast. Now I use instant yeast. If you're going to use fast
action yeast then you're going to have to put that into warm water. But for this instance,
we're just going to put it in. Here with the flour and just give that a little stir and then
here in my jug I have some nice kind of lukewarm water. Into that I'm going to add in my olive oil
and then simply add our wet into our dry and we're going to mix it together with a wooden spoon.
You might notice that this is a little bit of a wet dough, I find it that way with Ciabatta,
but that is totally fine. Lovely, I adore these recipes that you can mix by hand.
You don't need any special equipment and you get amazing results. Stay tuned 'cause you're going
to want to see the amazing ciabatta this dough makes. So once you do this mixture we’re going
to cover it up and keep it safe from the air. I use a shower cap because they're reusable and it
keeps it nice and snug. Now here's what you want to do. Like I said, no special equipment needed.
All you need here is time, so we're going to set this over to the side and let it hang out at room
temperature for roughly around 18 hours. If you make it the night before that, let it hang out
overnight. What happens during this time is that dough gets very strong. It strengthens,
it gets its texture, it gets its flavor. It's really, really a lovely time. Just let the dough
be and we’re going back tomorrow to shape it, get it into the oven and enjoy it. So the
dough has fermented overnight and let's have a little sneaky peek and see what it looks like.
Gorgeous. Look at that. It has risen up. It's lovely and bubbly, which is what I
love. Also, get a whif of that. It smells amazing. It smells a little bit sour, a little bit boozy. I
get emails often saying that they made bread fermented dough and it was kind of acidic. A
little bit sour. That's exactly what it's supposed to be like. You actually get used to that flavor,
and you want even more of it. So this is perfect spot on. So what we're going to
do is just knock the air out of the dough. I'm going to put a little bit of flour on my hands.
And then I'm going to turn it out onto my floured surfaces. I can already tell this
is going to be good bread 'cause it feels like a lovely dough. So here's
what I'm going to do. We're just going to divide the dough in half as evenly as we can,
and then you end up with two kind of short loaves of breads. So here I have a tray lined with nice
clean tea towel. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to dust it liberally with some flour,
and then what I'm going to do is just place my little rolls over here directly on the flour,
I'm going to dust the top with some more flour and then just cover them over nice and snug. So here's
what we're going to do. We're going to set this over to the side and let it proof for two hours
at room temperature. Now that is a long time, but during this time you get those big lovely bubbles
that you see in a ciabatta. But I don't want you to go anywhere because the dough doesn’t
go straight into the oven. We do one more step and then they go into the often so stay tuned. So it's
been 2 hours and our ciabatta is looking fantastic. It puffed up really well and you
can see that it has all those lovely bubbles trapped in there. That's exactly
what we want. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put flour on my hands and
I sprinkle a little bit on my tray. Also, I've got tray here lined with parchment paper.
What you want to do is very carefully roll your dough over what we're gonna do is flip our dough.
And then as we turn it and it's flipped, we're going to pull it and place it on our baking
tray. So you know when you get a ciabatta and you cut it open, and you have this lovely
big kind of stretched bubbles. This is what we're doing here. I'm going to do it with the second
roll again. Here we are. We're going to turn it over carefully. Pull it to around 16 inches.
And after that, as you probably know by now, but the reason I tell you to liberally dust the tray
with a flour to begin with is because your dough is very wet. You don't want it to stick
to it so just make sure at the beginning you have lots of flour on your tea towel.
OK, so let's look. These are gorgeous, it’s ready right now to go straight into a lovely hot oven.
Check that out. One of my favorite things is hot bread straight out of the oven and look how much
it puffed up. It got lovely and thick, which is fantastic. So just look at all those bubbles on
the inside. The way we stretched the dough, the way we fermented it built up all of those gorgeous
bubbles. That’s your hard work paying off. It’s beautiful. Of course now while it’s still warm I'm
going to cut a little bit for Kevin and I. Georgie was excited I don't know if you heard him.
There you go. Oh man, Georgie we gotta give you some. A little bit. Here you go. I think that's
the best review we could see. Lost the pacifier went for the bread. Yep oh yummy yummy yummy. Well
done, Gem. Absolutely delicious you’re gonna love this bread got such great flavor as well. Gem what
if you made a pizza out of it. Yeah, we could do a pizza out of it. A pizza ciabatta. Check out
all my other baking videos I know you’re going to like them. Going to like them. Even Waffles wants
some too. Here you go.