Reg from South Africa

I will definitely make this again- either way it was delicious. It may be time for this amateur cook to invest in a kitchen scale!

Kate

Using weight measurements is most precise since there isn’t any possibility for deviation, 1 pound is 1 pound. When converting from weight to volume measurements, there is alot of room for error.

For example, if I scoop 1 cup of flour directly from my flour bag, the flour will be compacted. I will have much more flour in my 1 cup than if I had filled the cup by shaking in 1 tablespoon of flour at a time.

Curious to test this out, I just ran into the kitchen and tried both of these approaches. :-) I used a big soup spoon to scoop the flour from the bag and shook the flour onto the scale. I then took this flour and poured into my measuring cup. The 17.6 ounces resulted in ~3.5 cups of flour.

I then did the reverse to see how close I would be if I had used just my measuring cups. I used a measuring cup to scoop flour from the bag then leveled with a knife. I took the measured flour and weighed it. Using this method, 3.5 cups of flour weighed 22.5 ounces! A difference of 5.9 ounces.

I would suggest measuring your flour by using a spoon to fill your measuring cup and aiming for 3.5 cups of flour. This should give you a close approximation of the weighed flour.

It’s important to note you should be using bread flour as this has a higher gluten content and also helps to attain the correct texture.

I attempted ciabatta yesterday using a regular ‘full method’ as found in a recipe from Epicurious. It was a disaster — taste and texture were both bad. I’ll post photos later today.

Let me know how this turns out for you.

So…I did it with four cups of flour and got a delicious bread- but much more of a standard dough, not the snot-like pourable stuff in the description.

So…I tried again with two cups of flour- this was completely liquid and bubbled but never rose, so I added in about a cup more flour (but it didn’t get beaten in) and let it rise some more. This was, I think closer to what it should of been and also delicious.

So… any advice? How many cups of flour? Would the two have worked if I had beaten it more and really let it rise and rise.

Ginny: Thank you! Hope you’ll give it a try and see how it compares to your other ciabatta experience.

Clay: Thank you!

Ben: I almost added some whole wheat flour for the health factor, then decided not to mess with the recipe just yet!

Kevin: Thank you!

Manggy: You noticed my nooks and crannies – yes, they eluded my english muffins, but I’ve achieved them in my ciabatta! Flip-flop shaped ciabatta will be just fine – do I detect a bit of perfectionism in you? :-)

Erin: I’ve been waiting for someone to point out that I missed a few spots with my butter knife :-)

Great images!