Ciabatta Integrale

This is the bread recipe I used for the previous sandwiches.  I had wanted to try a ciabatta and I found this recipe in my King Arthur Flour cookbook.  I had not done the pre-ferment overnight, and I only looked at page 1 and thought I only needed 3 hours of rise time, so I went ahead and started it in the morning.  Got all the way ready to bake it, and realized I needed another 2 hours of rise time - Oops.  I just tried to quick rise it in a steamy microwave.  It turned out pretty well.  I'm sure I would have had some better bubbles in there if it would have gotten it's full 2 hour rise, but sadly I didn't have the time.  Even with my mistakes, the bread was good, so it is definitely a keeper.  Just be warned - start the night before, then allow 5-6 hours for rising time.

Ingredients
Pre-ferment

• 1 cup wheat flour
• 1/2 cup water
• pinch of instant yeast

Dough

• All of the pre-ferment
• 1 1/4 cups wheat flour
• 2 1/4 cups unbleached flour (oops, just noticed I should have used bread flour)
• 1 1/4 cups cool water
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon yeast

Directions

1. Mix the pre-ferment ingredients in a small bowl (2-3 cup).  Cover and let rest ovenigt at room temperature.
2. In a mixer, combine all dough ingredients.  (At this point, it says to stop and let the mixture rest for 45 minutes - I didn't -hadn't read ahead and incorporated that 45 minutes either.)  Knead at low speed for 10 minutes.  (This is a wet dough, it will never form a ball.)  Lightly grease a large bowl.  Scrape the dough into the greased bowl.  (I just scraped my dough to one side of my mixer bowl, sprayed it with non-stick spray, scraped it to the other side and sprayed that side - worked fine for me.) 
3. Cover and let rise for 3 hours, gently deflating and turning over after 1 hour, then again after 2 hours and again after 3 hours.
4. Let the dough rest in the bowl for 10 minutes while preparing 2 baking sheets lined with parchment (I only used 1.  I just placed my loaves side by side.  Next time I'd just put them on parchment on my pizza peel because I transfered it to the baking stone anyway.)
5. Grease hands, divide dough in half.  Leaving 1/2 in the bowl.  Gently stretch the other piece until it is about 10 inches long.  Place on parchment and continue to stretch and pat until 12 inches long and 3-4 inches long.  (Basically I did this all in one step.  I just took my dough and made it about a 12 inch log and sat it on the parchment.)  Repeat with other half of the dough.
6. Cover with greased plastic wrap.  Allow to rise until puffy (about 2 hours)  (or if you're me who didn't turn the page of the recipe, put in the microwave shelf, boil some water on the bottom shelf to get it nice and steamy, and put the bread on the top to have a nice warm rise in a reduced time.)
7. Near the end of rising, preheat the oven to 425.  Bake for 20-25 minutes.   (I took mine out at this point but the directions say) Turn off the oven, crack it open about 2 inches, remove ciabatta from pans and place directly on the oven racks.  Allow to cool in the oven. (I'm sure the directions would have yielded a bit different loaf, but like I said, the way I made it, was still good, and it was ready a few hours earlier.  :)