I have also a book at home from Paul Hollywood from where I have bake a few recipes already. In his book there is a recipe for ciabatta’s but I just find to complicated, so I decided to try his simple version that is on his website (http://paulhollywood.com/recipes/ciabatta/) and the result was really good, of course I need to practise a few more times to master but still …
To make ciabatta’s you just need strong white flour, salt, instant yeast, olive oil, water and some semolina. Quite simple ingredients.
His recipe was actually for 4 ciabatta’s, since we are only 3 people at home I decided to give a go with the half of the recipe and just make 2 ciabatta’s that had suit us for the whole weekend, a perfect bread to eat for instance with pasta dishes. The preparation doesn’t have much mystery, mixing the ingredients, kneading and then have the patience to wait 2 hours until is risen.
Once is finally the double of the size you can give the dough the right ciabatta form, but you need to do this carefully that you take all the air out. Then a bit more of patience to leave the dough to rest a few more minutes before you can put in the oven for baking. Just the baking time was not 25 minutes like in the recipe, I had to leave them in the oven for about 40 minutes before had the right color, could be that the dough was just to wet. Anyway the whole house will smell nicely to fresh baked bread that will help of course to enjoy even more.
