I know, this doesn’t really look like ciabatta. Ciabatta should have a holier texture (that’s ‘holier’ as in ‘full of holes’, not some religious thing) than that and this just looks like your average loaf of bread. The crust, however, does have a ciabatta texture and the bread on the whole is a perfectly decent and light loaf which went beautifully toasted with my soup for lunch today.
The recipe I used is similar to this one at Frogeatstown except I added two large, chopped, sundried tomatoes out of a jar (I would have used more but I only had two left) after a couple of minutes into the cycle on the bread machine. I’m wondering now if maybe the oil from the sundried tomatoes is the reason for the un-ciabatta-like texture? It could also be because I’m not particularly accurate when it comes to measuring so my volumes were probably a bit off. Breadmakers out there – if you know about these things, please leave me a comment!
Bread machine sundried tomato ciabatta
1 ½ cups water
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 tsp white sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
3 ¼ cups strong white flour
1 ½ tsp fast acting yeast
2 large sundried tomatoes out of a jar, chopped
- Place all ingredients except the sundried tomatoes into your bread machine in the order specified in your instruction manual.
- Choose the dough program and press ‘start’.
- Add the sundried tomatoes after a few minutes.
- After the dough program has finished, turn the dough out on to an oiled baking sheet and bake in the oven at 220C/200 fan/gas mark 7 for about 20 minutes.