The best and easy recipe for ciabatta bread (2024)

FAQs

Is ciabatta bread soft or hard? ›

I've long loved ciabatta bread for its chewy exterior and soft crumb speckled with air holes. It's the perfect bread for dunking into soup, slicing horizontally and making a sandwich, converting to garlic bread, or for simply slathering with butter and eating until your heart's content.

Ciabatta is baked with a much higher hydration level, making the holes within the dough much bigger than a baguette. Ciabatta is also baked with a much stronger flour, which has a more delicate and sweet taste. Baguettes also tend to be baked more golden brown.

If you leave your dough rising for too long, the yeast can use up all its energy, and then have nothing to give when the dough goes in the oven. You will know if you have over proofed your dough if it collapses when you touch it, or if it doesn't rise in the oven.

In the oven: Preheat oven to 200° or Warm setting. Wrap the bread in a damp (not soaking) towel, place on a baking sheet, and pop it in the oven for 5-10 minutes. In the microwave: Wrap the bread in a damp (not soaking) towel, place it on a microwave-safe dish, and microwave on high for 10 seconds.

No.

“Ciabatta bread is relatively high in carbohydrates and has nearly zero grams of fiber,” Richards cautioned. Mowrer added some other red flags, which include “higher carbs, calories and sodium per slice compared to other bread.”

Ciabatta dough is wet and sticky with hydration levels often 80% or higher. Both the recipe below and this sourdough version are 82% hydration. (If you are unfamiliar: To calculate hydration percentage, simply divide the weight of the water by the weight of the flour; then multiply it by 100.

Sourdough bread is healthier than traditional ciabatta bread. Ciabatta bread is a popular type of Italian bread, and therefore, is less nutritious than sourdough bread due to the leavening agent used. However, if you are searching for a healthier ciabatta bread, you can choose one made with sourdough or whole grains.

A. Ciabatta bread is relatively high in carbohydrates than other bread forms. However, it has adequate fibre, sugar, protein, and essential vitamins for a healthy diet. As a result, it is an excellent source of energy.

The name derives from its appearance, as ciabatta in Italian means 'slipper', referring to its long, flat shape. Although throughout history there have been many breads that resemble ciabatta, the exact bread variety is actually quite new on the scene in regards to other traditional Italian breads.

If baked too soon or too late, loaves can collapse and have a dense, gummy center. “There are so many factors that affect rise time, so exact time will vary for every baker.

How do you refresh ciabatta bread in the oven? ›

“Refresh” (re-bake) it

Take a 'stale' loaf of sourdough bread, splash the top with water, and re-bake at 180/200C (fan/conventional) to restore to its just-baked condition. Indicative times are: 5-8 minutes for small loaves like baguette or ciabatta, 12-15 minutes for a 600-900g loaf.

Try less water with your flour. Uneven heat in your oven can be the culprit – if you loaf is nicely golden on the outside but gummy or moist in the inside, it's baking too quickly on the outside. Trying reducing the temperature you're baking at and bake for a bit longer.

It's made with a very wet dough, and it's pretty much a no-knead recipe. This results in an extremely airy interior, and a crisp, brown, chewy crust.

Ciabatta is high in hydration, which means it contains high amount of water. This makes handling the ciabatta dough little tough. To make making ciabatta bread easy, you can use a strong bread flour, which has high gluten levels and absorbs good amount of water.

For example, ciabatta bread has a higher water content, giving ciabatta an airier and lighter texture compared to sourdough bread. Ciabatta bread also has a crustier outer layer while sourdough bread tends to be chewier. These two types of bread also have differences in taste.

Asian bakery bread has that super soft and fluffy texture that is so different from European bread which tends to be much harder with a crust. The hardest part of making Asian-style bread is recreating that texture. It's very easy to end up with gummy or dense bread, rather than that cloud-like texture.

Texture: Focaccia has a lightweight, cake-like consistency that is similar to pizza dough. On the other hand, ciabatta has a dense consistency and a chewy texture.