Ciabatta is a bread sold in some bakeries. Bread lovers have probably seen it before but may not know its name without a label. Today, let's get to know this bread.
What Is Ciabatta?
Ciabatta is an Italian bread that many people call Italy's baguette. It earned this nickname because ciabatta was created to compete with the baguette, or French bread. In the mid-20th century the baguette became so popular in Italy that local baker Arnaldo Cavallari could no longer stand it.
The Birth of Ciabatta
In 1982, Arnaldo Cavallari created a bread made from the same main ingredients, wheat flour, water, yeast and salt, as an alternative for Italians who wanted bread. The loaf was flat, wide and rectangular, and its creator thought it looked like his wife's slipper, so he named it ciabatta, meaning "slipper" in Italian. He added the name of the area where he lived, Polesine, so at the time it was called "ciabatta polesana".
How Ciabatta Spread
By 1999, Cavallari's company, Molini Adriesi, had licensed the recipe to bakers in 11 countries, making ciabatta better known among Italians. Other bakers also tried to create their own versions, making ciabatta from a soft, wet dough using gluten flour instead of wheat flour, and many recipes add olive oil, a favourite ingredient in Italian cooking.
Many regions have their own traditional ciabatta recipes. Ciabatta from around Lake Como has a crisp crust with a fairly soft, porous, light crumb. Ciabatta found in Tuscany, Umbria and Marche is different, with a firm crust and dense crumb, compared with breads that have a crisper crust and a more open crumb. In Rome, it is often flavoured with mint.
Ciabatta Goes International
Ciabatta was introduced to the United Kingdom in 1985 by Marks & Spencer, and then to the United States in 1987 by Orlando Bakery, a Cleveland company that brought three bakers from Italy to develop the product and mass-produce it. They successfully introduced fresh ciabatta and later frozen ciabatta, and it spread rapidly across the United States. Other open-crumb versions, common in the US, are made from a very wet dough that usually needs a kneading machine and a biga or sourdough starter.
Ciabatta is considered an "artisan bread", a craftsman's loaf that takes great care to achieve its crisp crust and soft, chewy interior, which is why ciabatta is popular around the world.
