Ciabatta made with double preferment

Here is another ciabatta experiment I made yesterday. I have been seeking a slightly more complex flavor than ciabatti made with yeasted preferments only, but not as sour as in a typical sourdough-only formula. Thus, I made both a biga and a levain for this dough. Both were stiff at 60% hydration, both had 20% prefermented flour, so the total prefermented flour in the recipe was 40%. I added an additional 0.3% instant yeast when mixing the final dough. This time I also included 3% olive oil in the formula. Salt was at the standard 2 %. Overall hydration at 80%. Entirely hand-mixed.

I think this is my favorite ciabatta I made so far. I really like the slightly more acidic flavor the levain brought to the bread. I enjoy sourdough on the milder side, not a huge fan of overly sour bread. In this formula, I think the biga and the added yeast were the ones responsible for the rise, and the levain gave a more complex flavor profile. I wonder if the biga contributed to the flavor in this case, since levain was also used, it may have simply overpowered the more subtle acidity of the biga. Next time I will try and see what happens if I leave out the biga altogether. 

The only thing I was not completely satisfied with was the shape of the baked loaf. This time I was aiming for a taller, more barrel-like shape, so I shaped the dough combining methods of Ciril Hitz and Scott MeGee, inspired by Alan (alfanso). Although the dough had a nice oven spring and the crumb was very light and open, it didn't hold its shape that well. My guess is that I might have overproofed the dough either at the bulk stage or at the final proof.