Ciabatta with cheese (Ciabatta al formaggio) from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread (page 142) by Peter Reinhart

anya_sf on May 13, 2018

For me, this recipe had both too many instructions and not enough - e,g,, the cheese variation says to fold in the cheese at the stretch-and-fold turns as if the dough has already been portioned, yet the master recipe has the turns prior to dividing the dough. I made the poolish version; the dough was fairly easy to mix. I ended up adding the cheese when I shaped the individual loaves, folding them twice instead of once. I placed them on a sheet pan to rise and did not attempt to turn them over. They rose so much that I couldn't bake them all at once, so I removed 2 loaves to a sheet of parchment on a peel and transferred them (still on the parchment) to the baking stone to bake. I added hot water to the steam pan, but skipped spraying the oven later. They ballooned up a lot and ended up rather misshapen. Still, they were delicious; the cheese pockets were the best part, so I'd try to add more next time (I used aged jack and mozzarella).