Ciabbata Bread Recipe (and sandwich)

Me love Bread!
That is a fact and an incentive to bake my very own Ciabatta. Again I can blame the cold weather for my cooking-baking frenzy these days or just admit how great it is to spend time in your kitchen.

Well baking bread is certainly not an easy task. Things get a bit more complicated when I tried to search the net and various recipes were offered to confuse me even more. But I  made a good choice by selecting the following recipe from BBC Good Food website

Two minor tweets though in my case:
- the amount of yeast could be slightly decreased when using the yeast here in Turkey or the 42g cube of Yaş Maya.
- also,  the my bread loaves can be baked 5 min less than the indicated time to make them even more softer inside and crispy outside.

But overall, I think  they were pretty successful as we enjoyed them in a Turkey burger sandwich with a side of potato puree (for a change from french fries)

The trick of this recipe or in Turkish the Puf Noktası  is to separate the ingredients in half and prepare half of the dough overnight

Here is the recipe first, followed by some of my pictures

Ciabatta

 Ingredients:

Ovenight preparation

• 250g/9oz Italian type '00' bread flour
• 190ml/7fl oz water
• 15g/½oz yeast

To finish the bread

• 250g/9oz Italian type '00' bread flour
• 10g/½oz yeast
• 190ml/7fl oz water
• 12g/½oz salt

Preparation method:

1. For the overnight preparation, mix the flour with the water in a large bowl and add the yeast. Whisk for three minutes and leave to rise overnight (or at least eight hours).
   
2. To finish the bread, add the remaining flour and yeast to the bread mixture and mix well.
   
3. Gradually add the rest of the water to the bread mixture. When nearly all of the water has been added, add the salt to the remaining water and mix together for a further five minutes, until a sticky dough is formed.
   
4. Transfer the dough into a large oiled bowl and leave to rise for one hour.
   
5. Transfer the dough to a heavily floured work surface and leave to rest for a further 30 minutes.
   
6. Preheat the oven to 240C/465F/Gas 8.
   
7. Cut the dough into three strips and stretch them out to make long, flat ciabatta loaf shapes.
   
8. Place onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper and leave for ten minutes.
   
9. Transfer the dough to the oven to bake for 25 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown.
   
10. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.