Ciabatta (Italian Slipper Bread)

I still dream of ciabatta the Italian Slipper bread after watching so many bakers baked their beautiful ciabatta with great crumbs and big wholes during the Bake Along organized by Lena, Joyce and Zoe. However, I wait, and wait and wait until the day ...where I no need to cook the lunch for Gabriel and no need to do housework :)

Here it goes all ingredients into the KitchenAid and let it beats for a good 30 mins! Of course it needs to change the flat beater to dough hook in between. This is the first time I make a ciabatta and also first time encountered this type of very wet bread dough. When the flat beater stired the watery dough, my heart keep thinking wheather this is going to be a successful bread, luckily the final result is pleasing, it got lot of  big wholes :) I am really surprise by the crisp-crusted with soft bread texture Italian bread.

I am using Lena's recipe which she adapted from Sotong Cook (she followed Jason's Cocodrillo Ciabatta) As I wish my ciabatta to be more flavourful, I subsituted the water with milk and added olive oil and some herbs in it.

wet dough before proofing.

the dough triple its size after proofing. It still look and feel wet.

Recipe adapted from Lena with some changes

Ingredients:

500g bread flour

450-490ml water (used 490ml warm milk)

2 tsp instant dry yeast

15g salt

1 tsp of dried parsley flakes

1 tsp of dried coriander flakes

20ml olive oil

Step:

1. Mix all ingredients (except olive oil) with a flat beater in low speed till they are combined, let the dough rest in the mixing bowl for 10 minutes.
2. After 10 minutes, change the speed to medium on your mixer (speed  4 on KA mixer) and beat for about 10 minutes. The dough is still a batter at this point of time. Change to the dough hook, pour in olive oil and continue beating on medium high speed (speed 6 on KA mixer) till the batter leaves the sides and the bottom of the bowl. This will take probably another 10 minutes.
3. Remove and pour the dough into a oiled container and let it proof till triple its size. I placed the container into the warm oven (which I heated at 100C for 10 mins) 

4. Scrape the dough out from the bowl onto a heavy floured surface and divide the dough into 2 pieces using your scrapper , gently shape the dough and use your fingers to lightly pinch all over the dough and let it proof and cover for another 45 minutes.
5. After 45 minutes, using 2 scrappers, pick up the dough and flip them over to your prepared baking pan, gently shape them and bake at 230C for 25 mins.