VideoNEW
Podcasts
Blogs
Watch Video
Food Category
Cuisine Category
Special Consideration
Ciabatta pillows recipe
- Cuisine: Modern Australian
- Makes 8
After trying different combinations of flour, Yoke has found that the combination of white spelt and white wheat, plus a small amount of kamut or semolina flour, makes the best ciabatta. This dough is sticky; knead it using a breadmaker or an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook, or ‘stir’ it by hand. Thankfully, it doesn’t need shaping. Just cut it into rectangles on a work surface dusted generously with flour. For accuracy, use a digital scale to weigh all the ingredients, including the water, which is why it’s expressed here as a weight.
Ingredients
360g water, at room temperature100g ripe starter*, at room temperature
250g (1⅔ cups) organic white wheat, plus extra, to dust
250g (1⅔ cups) organic white spelt flour
60g (¼ cup) kamut or coarse semolina flour
Preparation
Place water, starter, the flours and 2 tsp salt, in this order, in a large, non-metallic bowl. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, stir until just combined. Cover with a damp tea towel and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.Stir dough for 5 minutes or until elastic and stiff enough that it is almost impossible to continue stirring; don’t worry about over-stirring the dough. For the first rise, place the dough in an airtight container and set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 1 hour in warm weather and 2 hours in cold weather.
Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and stretch dough lengthwise until three times its length, then fold halfway onto itself. Repeat stretching and folding until it becomes impossible to stretch the dough without breaking its surface; be careful not to overstretch the dough.
For the second rise, place the dough in an airtight container and set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 4 hours or until almost 2½ times its original size; the dough will be full of air bubbles and will feel ‘squeaky’ to the touch.
Place a a 36cm pizza stone or granite tile on the bottom shelf of your oven and preheat it to your conventional oven’s highest setting (at least 250°C).
Dust your work surface generously with flour, then gently shape dough into a log. Dust the top of the dough with more flour.
Using a pastry scraper, cut dough into 8. Using scraper, carefully slide 4 pieces onto the hot pizza stone. Sprinkle with water, return pizza stone to oven and bake for 5 minutes. Sprinkle bread with a little more water (this ensures a good crust), then bake for a further 6 minutes or until light golden and bread is cooked through. To test whether it has cooked, tap base of bread; if it sounds hollow, it’s cooked through. Repeat with the remaining 4 pieces of dough.
Serve ciabatta warm or freeze in airtight containers for up to 2 months.
* If you don’t have a ripe starter, you can buy Yoke’s wild sourdough starter online from her website or, alternatively, buy sourdough starters from selected bakeries.
Photography by Jackson Eaton.
If you enjoyed this Ciabatta pillows recipe then browse more Modern Australian recipes, bread recipes, prepare ingredients in advance recipes, healthy recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.
Modern Australian Restaurants
Displaying 10 of 601 Modern Australian Restaurants.
| Restaurant | Book Online | Suburb | |
| 1. | Valentino's | Northbridge | |
| 2. | Smithfield Tavern | Smithfield | |
| 3. | Benny's Bar & Cafe | Fremantle | |
| 4. | Arch Rival | Palmerston | |
| 5. | Stirling Hotel | Stirling | |
| 6. | Inn Mahogany Creek | Mahogany Creek | |
| 7. | Morning Star Estate | Mt Eliza | |
| 8. | Anise | City | |
| 9. | Artespresso | Kingston | |
| 10. | The Boat House by the Lake | Barton |
Featured Food & Recipes
Hot Tips
Rare roast beef
Using a meat thermometer helps to determine precisely when the beef is cooked to rare. Simply insert the thermometer into the centre of the thickest part of the beef (avoiding the bone, fat and gristle), it will be cooked to rare when it is 50°C, medium-rare will be 55°C, medium is a little over 60°C.
Glossary
Jackfruit
Jackfruit (Mit) is a large, green fruit with a tough, knobbly skin which reveals a yellow segmented flesh when opened. It has a taste that is naturally sweet. In Vietnam, the young jackfruit is used like a vegetable in cooking or in salad.
