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Rustic ciabatta — a crackly, flour-dusted crust and a wildly open, holey crumb that's made for soaking up olive oil. The secret is a wet dough and a gentle hand. I build a poolish the night before, then bake the same day once it's bubbly and alive. It's a slack 80% hydration dough, so you slap and fold rather than knead — and a little of my sourdough starter goes in for an extra layer of flavour.
Ingredients
Poolish (the night before)
- 200g Shipton Mill strong white flour
- 200g water
- 1g (a small pinch) dried active yeast
Final dough
- All of the poolish
- 300g Shipton Mill strong white flour
- 200g water (80% hydration overall)
- 30g active sourdough starter
- 10g fine salt
- 80g pitted olives, roughly chopped (optional)
To finish
- Fine Shipton Mill semolina & flour, for the couche and dusting
Method
- Make the poolish (night before): Whisk the 200g flour, 200g water and a small pinch of dried active yeast together until smooth. Cover and leave at room temperature overnight (8–12 hours), until it's bubbly, risen and domed, with a gently sour, beery smell.
- Mix the dough: Tip all the poolish into a bowl with the remaining 300g flour, 200g water, the 30g of sourdough starter and the salt. Mix to a wet, shaggy dough. At 80% hydration it'll feel alarmingly slack and sticky — that's exactly right, so resist the urge to add flour.
- Build strength with slap-and-folds: Tip the dough onto a clean, unfloured surface and slap and fold it — lift it, slap it down, fold it over itself, and repeat. After a few minutes it transforms from a sticky mess into a smooth, strong, elastic dough. Rest 10 minutes and give it one more short round. (Adding olives? Fold them through now.)
- Bulk ferment in a warm kitchen: Cover and leave somewhere warm until the dough is visibly risen, puffy and full of bubbles — alive and jiggly. A warm spot keeps this a same-day bake; bake it once it's properly bubbly.
- Gentle turn-out & divide: Generously dust your surface and a couche with semolina and flour. Tip the airy dough out without knocking the gas out of it, and use a bench scraper to divide it into two. Handle it as gently as you can — those bubbles are the whole point.
- Shape & rest on the couche: Gently coax each piece into a rough rectangular slipper shape and lay it on the floured couche, well coated in semolina and flour to stop it sticking. Let them rest in the warm while the oven heats.
- Transfer to parchment: When they're bubbly and relaxed, gently transfer each ciabatta onto a sheet of parchment paper, flipping so the floured side faces up. Move them as little and as gently as possible to keep the open structure.
- Bake (same as my baguettes): I bake these between two pizza stones — one for the ciabatta to sit on and a second on the shelf above to reflect heat back down. Preheat both as hot as the oven goes (250–260°C) for 45 minutes. Slide the ciabatta in on their parchment, add steam, and bake 20–25 minutes until deep golden, crisp and hollow-sounding, and the internal temperature hits ~98°C.
- Cool: Cool on a wire rack. Tear one open warm to see that big, irregular, glossy crumb — ciabatta is best eaten the day it's baked.
Tip: The poolish does the heavy lifting on rise and texture; the 30g of sourdough starter is there purely for flavour — a subtle depth and tang you don't get from yeast alone. And don't fight the 80% hydration: the wetter the dough, the bigger and more beautiful the holes.
That extra layer of flavour comes from real sourdough culture. Ours is live, organic and ready to bake in 2 hours.
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