BIGA: Add water, yeast, and flour into a high sided container and mix until no dry clumps of flour remains. Let ferment at room temp for 6-24 hours.
AUTOLYSE: Into bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, mix your Autolyse (water and flour) on low until combined. Cover with town and let sit for 30 minutes.
FINAL MIX: For your final mix, add warm water, yeast, salt, and biga to your autolyse and mix on low for 3 minutes. Increase speed to high and mix for 5 more minutes. When dough is mixed enough it should clear the bowl and begin to get shiny.
FERMENTING AND SHAPING Transfer dough to an oiled bowl. Cover and ferment at room temperature for 30 min. Do strength building fold as shown. Cover again and let sit at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Laminate dough as shown 4:27 (this takes the place of a 2nd stretch and fold). After laminating, transfer back to bowl seam side down, cover and allow to ferment at room temp for 1 hour. Dough should be gassy and alive at this point.
Liberally flour work surface and dough well. Use dough card to release dough from bowl as completely as possible before transferring dough to work surface. Gently pat into a square slab.
Prepare a piece of parchment that's larger than your slab of ciabatta dough by liberally flouring it. Cut dough into two equal rectangles and gently transfer to floured parchment. Cover and proof at room temp for 30 min.
BAKING Preheat oven to 500F/260c - I also preheat my baking steel/stone on the middle rack and a cast iron pan in the bottom of my oven.
Boil water. Slide ciabatta onto baking steel and pour boiling water into cast iron pan in the oven.
Cover loaves with turkey pan, decrease heat to 480F/248C and bake for 12 min. Remove foil pan and continue to bake for 13-15 minutes until crust is a deep golden brown.
Cool on wire rack.
1. To make it easier to handle with little sticking, also crunchy crust: combined 400g bread flour with 100g King Arthur high gluten flour, giving a total gluten content of about 13%. this dough is extremely easy to handle with very little sticking. The higher gluten content allowed the dough to rise more and shape easier, producing a more open crumb and a very crunchy crust. 2. Incorporating yudane to achieve softer centre: reserved 50g of flour and poured 100g of boiling water over it and mixed in completely. After allowing it to cool to room temp. Mix it in with the biga and followed the rest of the recipe. The result is a huge open crumb ciabatta with great crust but a far softer center which was even better at holding dipping oil than a traditional ciabatta.