Authentic Italian Ciabatta Bread recipe meaning slipper bread, originally from the Veneto, made with an overnight starter and cooked just like a pizza on a preheated pizza stone.
Invented by Franceso Favaron in 1982, this is the perfect Italian bread for sandwiches, Bruschetta, panzanella or just to dip in your favorite olive oil as an antipasto.
Very easy to make at home, it’s egg free and dairy free, but you will need to execute some patience and plan in advance for the starter or Biga.
Italian Biga • Keeping It Simple Blog
An Italian starter similar to a sourdough starter but thicker, made from a little bit of flour, water and yeast and allowed an initial fermentation. It gives the bread a unique and wonderful flavor.
Don’t be intimated! This is a sticky wet dough overall, hence those nice coveted holes that make ciabatta different and special. Just feel confident and roll with it, don’t be temped to add extra flour, all will be well and turn out great.
If you are looking for a last minute quick crusty bread to make for dinner, please try our Rustic Italian Bread Recipe instead, also baked on a pizza stone.
Homemade Italian Bread
Store your homemade ciabatta in a breadbox or plastic storage bag at room temperature for 2 to 3 days. Alternatively you can slice it and freeze it in freezer proof bags up to 3 months. Place the slices directly in the toaster when ready to eat, no need to thaw them out.
An authentic Italian recipe for ciabatta bread or slipper bread, originally from the Veneto made with an overnight starter and cooked just like pizza on a preheated pizza stone
#1 To get a crusty loaf make sure to use a pizza stone and also create some steam in the oven by placing a dish filled with water on the bottom as the oven heats up. Add more water if needed before baking the bread. Allow the loaves to cool inside the oven after baking with the oven door slightly open.
Sourdough Italian Bread
#2 If you don't have a stand mixer just use a wooden spoon to mix the dough together, it will appear to be more difficult this way as we are dealing with a wet dough. In this crusty white bread recipe I tried to make the process simple and my intention is to help you make the best bread with the least effort as possible.
The method does not need more work from our side but it needs more “time” to do their own work.So the main ingredient that we need for making this crusty white bread or this basic artisan bread is “Time“.
If you are busy and you want to make rustic bread from straight dough in more easy way, we have excellent recipes that makes great bread too.
Rustic Italian Bread
You can check this Rustic Artisan Bread made from straight dough.In the step by step video, I have shown how to make no knead bread in a Dutch oven and how to make crusty bread even without a dutch oven.
One of the most favorite bread recipes in our blog is the Easy No knead Artisan Ciabatta Bread, which is also made from straight dough.Though the ciabatta bread recipe did not use any preferment like biga or poolish, you can achieve great open crumb texture due to the brilliant shaping that we use while making the bread.
We also have No knead cranberry walnut bread recipe which has a crunchy crust and delicious soft crumb inside; which also uses easy straight dough method.
Crusty Italian Bread 2
It is made with fewest ingredients ;Flour ,water, salt and a leavening agent a starter, either a wild yeast starter, such as sourdough, or a “biga” or “poolish”
A starter is usually a simple mixture of wheat flour, water, and a leavening agent (typically yeast or some sourdough culture). After mixing, it is allowed to ferment before it’s added to the final dough.
It also requires some advanced planning as you have to plan ahead of time in order for it to be ready when you need it.
Pane Cassereccio Recipe
I like to prepare it towards the evening(around 5 PM) so that we can start making the real bread dough in the morning (around 9 AM).
Even when I used “24 hour” biga, I could not notice a sour taste or acidity in the baked bread.(The weather is hot here where I live and the inside temperature is set to 28 C)
Yes you can different types of flour(But the water absorbing power of different flours may differ ;I have noticed difference in behavior even when we use same type of flour but different brands)
Crusty Rustic Italian Bread Recipe
What I noticed is that all purpose flour absorbed more water and I found the measurements just perfect when working with all purpose flour.
So what I inferred is that bread flour will get ripened fast and so if you are using bread flour instead of all purpose flour, either
I find the best time to use biga is when the starter is dome shaped or when the rise is at its peak; and just before the dough starts to collapse or before bubbles start to form.I found it around 12-15 hours is the best time to use the starter.
Homemade Italian Bread Recipe
I have only worked with two different types of flour (All purpose flour from QFM and Enriched, Unbleached unbromated Bread flour from Gold Medal ) while testing this rustic bread recipe .I think flour from different brands may perform slightly differently which is not a big issue in this Rustic bread recipe made with biga.
If you want to use a stand mixer you can use it at this point, which will make the process much easier.
For that we will do 1 round of “stretch and fold” in 45 minutes and then another “layering of dough sheet” in another 45 minutes
Biga Loaf (italian Method)
Bread dough needs to be elastic, and it’s a good idea to test the dough for gluten strength before you go ahead with the bread baking process.
To do this, take a small piece of the dough and stretch it until it breaks. If the strand is about an inch long and can stretch without breaking, then your bread dough has sufficient gluten strength.
Place the shaped dough on to a bannetton or onto a rectangular cake pan or a round bowl, lined with a well dusted(best to use gluten free flour like rice flour so that it will not stick to the dough) kitchen towel.
Semolina Bread Recipe
Let the shaped bread dough sit and rise for 50 minutes in a warm environment and 50-60 minutes in a cold environment.
By scoring a bread, we are intentionallycreating a weak spot on the surface of the loaf preventing the loaf from bursting at any other weak spots created during shaping.
Transfer the dough on to a well preheated dutch oven(250C)(I recommend an oven thermometer to make sure your oven is hot enough) and close the pot with an oven safe lid.
Italian Bread Recipe By Tasty
And then bake foranother 8-12 minutes without the lid (450 F or 230C), until the top of the bread is nice and deep golden brown.
This extra baking will give that outer crust of the bread to get a more crisp and caramelized golden brown color and a nutty flavor.
When baking these last few minutes, heat is directly acting only on the surface of the bread.So reducing the temperature by 20 C will help, not to overburn the crust and at the same time will make it more crunchy.
Easy Homemade Bread With Biga
You will be rewarded with a Bread, with a thin, crunchy brown crust and airy, soft and tender crumb inside. The bread is slightly chewy, so flavorful and perfect open crumb texture.
As we use 80 % preferment or biga in this rustic bread recipe, and as it is slowly fermented, the bread has got amazing flavor.We can have it even with some plain butter or Olive oil.
During the initial stages of baking, steam is released from the dough itself into the sealed container, which keeps thedough moist; this allows the bread to develop a crispy, shiny crust and attain maximal volume.
Italian Biga Recipe
Rustic Bread recipe with Biga can be made with only 4 ingredients.This Crusty White Bread Recipe will help you make the best homemade artisan bread which has an amazing flavor and texture.
I’ve made this bread several times now and we love it! It comes out soooo beautiful and crusty. I have one question - it tends to be slightly dense and gummy - it’s definitely cooked through, just slightly heavy, and I wondered if you had any advice to fix it? I think it might be oven temp, but not sure if I should increase or decrease. Going to keep experimenting though as this bread is so satisfying to make, and delicious! Thank you for the recipe!
After combining the biga and bread dough can I put it in the fridge and bake it later? I’m asking because I messed up on the timing and I would be baking it in the middle of the night.
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