No-knead ciabatta bread – Italian recipe (VIDEO)

Have you ever tried to make homemade bread? This ciabatta bread is a fragrant no-knead bread, that needs just a pinch of yeast and a long rising time, for a great result!

***

Would you like a fragrant homemade bread with the least effort? Today we’ll prepare it together by mixing only the ingredients and letting them rise for 18 hours with just a pinch of yeast. In this way, the bread doesn’t need to be kneaded before baking. But let’s see together what ingredients we’ll need:

• 4 ¾ cups (600 g) of flour
• ¼ tsp (1 g) of active dry yeast
• 1 tsp of malt (or 1 tsp of honey or sugar)
• 2 ½ tsp (15 g) of salt • about 2 cups (500 ml) of water
• 2 tbsp of cornmeal
• extra virgin olive oil

Let’s make together the no-knead ciabatta bread:

Begin by sifting the flour over a large bowl; now add the dry active yeast and the water, where salt and malt have been dissolved. After adding all the liquid, mix just enough to blend the ingredients.
And here is the resulting dough. With a spatula, remove the remains of dough, then cover with cling film… and let it rise for at least 18 hours at room temperature, that is at no more than 75°F (24°C).
This is how the dough looks after 18 hours of rising time, as you can see it’s full of air bubbles and very sticky. Now spray a little water on the worktop… and cover with a piece of cling film, where we’ll shape our ciabatta bread. In this way, the cling film will stick to the worktop without moving. Now sprinkle the cling film with flour… and we’ll pour the dough onto it. It’s very sticky, as I said before. Flour your hands and roll out the dough; so sprinkle some more flour on top and form it into a loaf.
Take a drip pan, grease with a little oil and sprinkle with cornmeal: this will keep the bread from sticking to the pan while baking. Now, the most difficult step… turn the dough out on the drip pan. It’s not always successful, but we’ll try. Perhaps help yourselves with a spatula… in this way. Now press it a bit… into a flat, long shape… sprinkle some more flour… then cover with a clean cloth and let it rise for at least 2 hours, this time at 85°F (30°C).
And here is our ciabatta bread after 2 hours of rising. All we have to do now is bake in preheated oven at 430°F (220°C) for about 40 minutes.
Well… I think it’s a great homemade bread! And, with so little yeast, this ciabatta bread is very light and digestible.