Simple Ciabatta Bread

This ciabatta bread can be shaped into rolls or loaves, but either way it will be light and airy, chewy with crisp exterior.

Ciabatta bread was perhaps the first bread I fell in love with. I loved its crusty exterior yet soft and holey interior. It’s excellent for sandwiches and toasting and letting butter get inside all those holes. I mean, look at this sandwich I made with this recipe:

However, making ciabatta bread can be much more finicky. Many recipes have long proofing times, some use a poolish or biga to start, and the dough isn’t always the easiest to work with. Most of the time, I just buy it from the store because it’s easier. But easier doesn’t always mean better. Homemade ciabatta bread just tastes so much better!

Generally, ciabatta bread is made from just four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, and water. Mine has one additional ingredient (which can be left out if you are intolerant): milk. I learned from America’s Test Kitchen that adding a little milk helps weaken the gluten which makes the bubbles in the bread a little more uniform. This prevents GIANT bubbles next to small ones, which make bread harder to use in things like a sandwich. Milk also adds a little fat which helps with flavor.

Baking Tips & Notes

Ciabatta bread is a high hydration bread. My focaccia dough is around 91% and my bagel recipe is around 55% (which is pretty dry). High hydration doughs yield lots of bubbles which is great, however it can make them hard to handle. This ciabatta bread is at 80% hydration, so not as wet as focaccia but still pretty high. Because of this, we use both the stand mixer and stretch and folds to help develop the gluten and make the dough more workable.

Making sure your hands are wet and your work space and tools are floured is going to make a ton of difference. Wet hands prevent the dough from sticking to you without adding more flour to the dough. The floured workspace do the same, however flour patterns on the crust of ciabatta are a signature look so more is more on this one.

Additionally, because the dough is high hydration, shaping your dough takes a little bit of skill or practice. The first time you make these you will see, however not being afraid to use flour on your work space and a good bench scraper will help tremendously. As always though, practice makes perfect but irregularly shaped ciabatta will still TASTE just as good.

If you have a pizza or baking stone, instead of placing your parchment on a baking sheet I would just place your parchment on your counter and then when you’re ready to bake use a pizza peel or if you have a sheet pan without sides (or one flipped over) to transfer your parchment to the baking stone. This is completely optional, I have made this ciabatta bread several times just on a regular sheet tray and it was great. The baking stone will help create extra crust though.

This recipe is also not an overnight proofing recipe like many ciabatta bread recipes because I wanted to create one with a lower barrier to entry. This recipe could be turned into an overnight recipe though by refrigerating the dough after all the stretch and folds instead of letting it proof on the counter for an hour. Once it has proofed overnight I would then shape the dough, but your proofing before baking will most likely be much longer – depending on how warm your home is.

Ciabatta Bread Key Ingredients

• Bread Flour – I did test this recipe with AP flour as well, and it does work so you can use all purpose but I do recommend bread flour. My bread flour loaves were slightly more workable dough and the bread had a taller rise as well.
• Milk – Just a tiny bit of milk added to this dough will help weaken the gluten and help with the structure of the bread. Make sure it is warm though!
• Salt – Most of the flavor of this bread comes simply from salt. Use a good sea salt. If you are using kosher salt, go by the weight not the amount as different brands have different size and can be much more or less salty.