Two versions, same bread family: Yeasted with poolish. Big open crumb, ready to bake tomorrow afternoon. Mix the poolish tonight: 150g flour, 150g water, a pinch (0.5g) of instant yeast. Whisk, cover, leave on the counter. 12 to 16 hours at room temp and you’ll wake up to a bubbly, domed preferment. Sourdough with levain. Deeper flavor, better keeping, adds 2–3 hours tomorrow. Feed your starter tonight, or build a small levain before bed: 10g ripe starter, 50g flour, 50g water. Float test in the morning confirms it. Both one-sheets are live in the Pantry now. Same structure, same 80% hydration, same no-shape, no-score slipper loaves. Pick your path. I’m back from being out of town this morning, so I’m here. Questions about timing, flour, starter strength, whether your kitchen is too cold, whether to do both — drop them below. I’ll be in the thread all afternoon. Recipe: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/rustic-italian-ciabatta Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

🍞 THIS SATURDAY: Rustic Italian Ciabatta After babka week nearly broke the comment counter and marbling bread had everyone turning dough into art, we're going back to basics. Sort of. This Saturday we're baking a proper Rustic Italian Ciabatta. Lean dough, 80% hydration, built on an overnight poolish. No shaping. No scoring. Just a wet, bubbly dough that gets poured onto a floured counter, cut in half, and baked into two crackly-crusted slippers with the kind of open, honeycomb crumb that makes olive oil sing. Here's why this one matters: It teaches hydration confidence. If 80% hydration makes you nervous, this is exactly the dough you need to bake. You can't hurt it by treating it gently. You can only hurt it by over-handling. It teaches preferments. The poolish is 5 minutes of work Friday night and it does 80% of the flavor work while you sleep. Once you understand what a poolish does for ciabatta, you'll start using them in other breads too. It teaches minimal intervention. Every week we've been talking about building tension, scoring, shaping, stretching. Ciabatta is the counterpoint. Sometimes the best shaping is no shaping at all. Three paths to pick from: (check the toggle in the recipe) 🥖 Yeasted with Poolish (classic, beginner-friendly) 🌾 Sourdough with Levain (for my starter folks) 🧀 Inclusions welcome (olives, roasted garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, rosemary, whatever you've got) Recipe is in the Recipe Pantry now. Friday night we mix the poolish. Saturday morning we bake. https://skoo.ly/rustic-ciabatta I'll be in the kitchen and in the thread all day. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

This is where flavor starts. Equal parts flour and water. A pinch of yeast. Let it sit overnight. By morning, it’s alive. Bubbly. Ready to go. That’s fermentation already working before your dough even comes together. If your bread feels like it’s missing something, this is usually it.

👋 We’ve got a lot of new faces in the Academy this week, and the Saturday bake-along is coming up fast. If you’ve never done one before, here’s what to expect. If you’ve been around a while, this is a good refresher to share with someone you’ve been trying to pull in. Here’s how it works. 📅 The recipe for the week gets announced on Monday, and we post about it throughout the week. Teaching posts, technique breakdowns, reminders, prep tips. By the time Saturday rolls around, you’ve already got everything you need to bake with confidence. 🥖 This week it’s Rustic Italian Ciabatta. 👉 Recipe here: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/rustic-italian-ciabatta ☀️ Saturday morning around 8:00 AM ET, I open a dedicated thread right here in the community feed. That thread becomes the living room for the day. Everyone gathers there. Photos of dough in progress, questions, wins, struggles, troubleshooting, side conversations. All of it happens in one place. 🚫 You don’t need a Zoom link. You don’t need to log in anywhere else. You don’t need to RSVP. You just show up in the feed. You’ve got three ways to participate: 🔥 Bake with us live. Some folks start Friday night, some start midday Saturday. It doesn’t matter when you begin. The group pace gives you a built-in rhythm and you can jump in wherever you are in the process. 🕐 Bake at your own pace. Some members have other commitments and don’t finish until Sunday. Some bake Monday. Doesn’t matter. Post your bake whenever you finish and you’ll still get eyes on it and feedback. 👀 Just watch. A lot of first-timers do this one. Read the thread, watch how people handle each step, see what questions come up, see what the dough looks like at different stages. That’s how you learn the rhythm before you ever touch flour. There’s no minimum participation requirement. 💬 Any questions about how it works, drop them below. No question is too basic. Henry ⭐🔥