Guide To Making No Knead Ciabatta

Just so I can make pan con tomate

Hello Everybody!

After my recent trip to Mallorca, you might think I would’ve come home dreaming of jamon croquettes, bbq’d octopus or maybe even chilled vermouth sipper by the pool under glorious sunshine; but no, despite having some wonderful meals filled with many a wonderful dish the one that really sits at the forefront of my mind was something incredibly simple, pa amb tomàquet (pan con tomate), bread with tomato. I know this is on every tapas bar menu and is often incredibly disappointing, bland tomatoes on soggy bread, but when it's done right I think it is one of the most perfect foods. The version that stuck out so much was the one served at El Camino In Palma. Their version was so generous with the tomato, so vibrant with garlic, all perfectly balanced with olive oil and plenty of salt. On our first visit to the restaurant, we ordered one to share; on the second visit, we corrected this mistake and ordered one each.

Before you ask, yes, this newsletter is going to be about a dish so simple it feels almost silly to write down a recipe for, but to counter that I also wanted to share a recipe for the bread the tomato sits on. At El Camino, The dish was made with sourdough, but I wanted to share my recipe for ciabatta, a bread that works perfectly for this dish. I should probably first apologise, to any Spaniards reading this for not using a Spanish-style bread, but the truth is I haven’t made many Spanish breads before. I could have made the Spanish pan di cristal, a bread cousin to ciabatta, but it is made with 100%+ hydration meaning it's an incredibly wet and sticky dough and I didn’t want to put any of you off. Ciabatta is still a gloriously light and open bread but made with a more manageable 80% hydration. We will save the pan di cristal for another time.

To make the bread, we are venturing back into the world of preferments. If you read my newsletter about making pizza using a preferment, you’ll know that there are a few different types. The pizza recipe was made with a poolish, a batter like preferment that uses an equal amount of flour to water. This recipe will use the biga style of preferment, which uses significantly less water, making it more of a dough-like texture. The reason for using this style of preferment is twofold. One, it’s the preferment most often used in Italian breads and ciabatta is, of course, an Italian bread. Secondly, the biga is a little more user-friendly. Once you’ve mixed up your flour, water and yeast, the preferment is left to rest for 12-24 hours until it has doubled or even tripled in size. Because this mixture is low in hydration and uses an incredibly small amount of yeast, it won't overproof very easily; it stays in a useable condition for a lot longer than the poolish style preferment. But why use a preferment in the first place? Firstly it makes for tastier bread. Think of a preferment as a cheat's sourdough, the slow fermentation it goes through adds more complexity to the bread. Secondly, preferments make bread doughs better, the preferment adds strength to the dough, making the dough easier to handle; this also leads to a dough with better oven spring. Finally, it also makes for a finished bread with better shelf life, a win when you’re making bread at home.

If you’ve never made ciabatta before, know that you will be working with a particularly wet dough but let me stop you from worrying and tell you this is easier to handle than you might be thinking. Wet doughs can be tricky, shaping them can be a pain and kneading them can feel like an exercise in exasperation, with dough sticking to you like glue. With ciabatta, you don’t have to worry. In this recipe, the dough isn’t kneaded, and it's also not shaped. Instead of kneading, the dough gets a few rounds of stretch and folds throughout the proofing stage (this will be very familiar if you’ve ever made my sourdough recipe), and its also not shaped; when the dough has proofed, you turn it out onto a floured work surface and simply cut into shape. It’s simple, I promise.