A Quick Ciabatta Primer

• The origins of ciabatta are hotly debated, with several living bakers taking credit for its creation, but the basics are well established. In the 1980s, Italian bakers wanted a bread to rival imported French baguettes for convenient sandwich making, and drew on various traditional loaves and techniques for inspiration. Ciabatta was the result, a flat and crusty bread with a well-defined flavor and an interior marked by a web of large, open holes. When sliced horizontally it makes excellent sandwich bread, and it was enthusiastically adopted throughout Italy, the United States and other countries during the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Technique

• Ciabatta uses an unusually wet or "slack" dough, which can't be kneaded conventionally but instead requires stretching and folding to develop the gluten strands. It's best when you use a starter, a portion of dough that's made up ahead of time and allowed to ripen for a day or more. That allows time for the flour's natural enzymes to unlock its sugars, giving the finished bread a rich and complex flavor. Multigrain ciabatta gains additional depth of flavor from the other grains, which -- like rye, buckwheat, corn and oats -- often have distinctive tastes of their own.

Finding a Balance

• Ciabatta bread works best with a moderate level of gluten, comparable to the all-purpose flours sold in most parts of the country. Whole wheat and rye flour have less gluten, and other flours, such as oat, corn and buckwheat, have none at all, so to get the best texture, you'll need to experiment or use a proven recipe. It's all about taste, texture and personal preference. The more white flour you use, the more predictable the dough will be, rising and stretching like ordinary ciabatta. The more alternative flours you use, the darker and more nutritious the flavors will be. Start by using approximately 1/3 alternative grain flour, then add more as you become more practiced at making ciabatta.

Making Your Own

• Start your own multigrain ciabatta by creating a starter with flour, salt, water and a very small amount of yeast. Starters containing at least some rye flour are especially lively, because rye is richer in flavor-enhancing enzymes than wheat. Once your starter has had at least a day to develop its flavors, remove it from the fridge and let it warm up. Incorporate it into your main ciabatta dough, creating a very soft dough that's up to 70 or 72 percent water by weight. Rise the dough, stretching and folding it once or twice to develop the gluten, then cut it and shape it into loaves. To create the signature open, bubbly texture inside your ciabatta, it's usually baked at 450 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.