Advice needed with Sourdough Ciabatta

[Marcus]

Hi all. I need to produce a sourdough ciabatta, Ive made non sourdough variety multiple times, but this one is giving me some difficulty. Using Biowheat stone ground white, and Outentic durum(yeast product based on sourdough, twice as strong as wet yeast). The sourdough was made from the same. I started off on a poolish of soupy consistency, but I have tried a drier biga variation too with more success. My first issue was that the dough would lose it's strength rather fast and thus collapse, I am assuming it's the acidity of the sourdough weakening it.
12.5 kg stone ground
7.5 l water
2kg sourdough
90g Outentic durum yeast
160g salt
150 sunflower oil

Making about 3 folds with half hour between each before putting it on table.
My last batch was just the biga(I made a very watery poolish in the morning and let it stand till afternoon, then mixed enough flour in to turn it into a biga, thought it might kickstart the fermentation a bit.)

Last batch was with just the biga, and had good stability, dough held it's strength, but... I still am not getting the bubbles I want, it's getting it's glutenous consistency inside, but not nearly enough bubbles to be called a ciabatta, it's more like a sourdough freeform loaf at the moment, normal bread cumb inside.

I considered using more yeast, but I don't want to speed the proccess too much. Perhaps feed yeast more with some added sugar???

Please help. Any advice to turn this recipe of mine into a quality ciabatta will be great.

 

[Becky]

I'd love to be able to help, but my experience with sourdough is very limited and I have no experience in working with bulk batches of dough. How long has your starter been going for? Mine took a couple of months before I started getting really good results from it.

 

[Marcus]

It's gotten rather ripe, Ive worked with sourdough before making Sourdough 60% Rye.
But using the full strength one makes the ciabatta rather weak so I changed to taking a bucket with water and a bit of flour with durum. letting it ferment through the morning for about 7 hours then adding a lot of flour to make a biga. It gets like very tough and clayish. By the next morning that is all fluffy under the top crust though. Its given me a much more stable dough.

I even cheated a little bit today.... that Outentic durum stuff is a tan coloured powder, and it's yeast of a sort though so I took it and dusted my hands with it when making folds in my ciabatta, so oven spring had a reaction to the pockets of concentrated yeast and made more air bubbles, still not what I want to achieve though but it's progress.

I'm producing about 16 loaves a day at the moment so I need to form a reliable process and recipe.

 

[Marcus]

Today's came out nicee and big, oven spring left em looking like pillows

 

[Becky]

Today's came out nicee and big, oven spring left em looking like pillows

Sounds great, glad to hear it's going well!