EASY Roasted Garlic Ciabatta BREAD ROLLS

My recipe for crusty roasted garlic ciabatta is easy to make and packed with a whole bulb of roasted garlic for mega garlic flavor. It's a simple bread dough made with all-purpose flour and a bit of good olive oil that you can make without a mixer. It's my personal favorite ciabatta bread to use when making cheesy ciabatta garlic bread slices as an appetizer. I usually add a bit of fennel seeds to the dough as well, but if you're not into fennel, leave them out!

Ciabatta is a lovely, assertive bread that can handle a lot of flavor being added in the baking process. As a certified Garlic Girlie (TM) I went ahead and added a whole bulb of roasted garlic and fennel seeds to it. The one-two punch of the roasted garlic and the aromatic fennel makes it just a little more interesting. Don't like fennel? No worries, it's optional!

This recipe is a little different than my soft-baked ciabatta bread; these garlic ciabatta rolls bake at a higher temp and end up with with a thicker crust. There are a few more sets of stretch-and-folds so the garlic has time to really infuse the dough with flavor, and so that the gluten network can support the weight of the roasted garlic cloves.

You do want to make the roasted garlic in advance, but otherwise this easy garlic ciabatta recipe can be done in a single afternoon.

There are a few ways to add strength and flavor to a bread dough. Some doughs require vigorous kneading, some require the slow and steady progression of time, and others, like this garlic ciabatta dough, use a technique called folding.

After mixing all the ingredients together, the dough ferments (rises) for a total of three hours. In that time, the yeast starts eating all the delicious sugars and starches in the dough and converting them into gas (aka air bubbles).

Those air bubbles are what makes the dough rise. But rising alone won't strengthen the gluten or develop the flavor. To do that, I do a set of stretch-and-folds on the dough every 30 minutes over the course of that 3 hour rise time (6 sets of folds total).

At first, the ciabatta dough will be loose, messy, and pretty stretchy. It might even tear a little. As the gluten develops with each set of folds, the dough will become stronger and harder to stretch. It will also grow slightly in size as air bubbles are trapped inside.

Below you can see what the ciabatta dough looks like before and after 6 sets of folds.

How to Cut Ciabatta Loaves or Rolls

There's no fancy bread shaping when it comes to ciabatta. You just plop and stretch it out and cut it into whatever sizes you want.

• Two long loaves
• Four medium-sized rectangular loaves
• Eight square-ish rolls

They all bake for the same amount of time.

Sometimes I even mix it up and do a combination of a few of these: one long loaf and four square-ish rolls; one long loaf, one medium-sized loaf, and two square-ish rolls; or heck, make eight triangles if you want. You can even cut pull-apart rolls by cutting the dough and not moving the pieces away from each other before baking.

This is one of the things I love most about ciabatta, by the way. There is absolutely NO FANCY SHAPING the way bread. It's so easy it almost feels like cheating. You simply turn your dough out onto the floured countertop, loosely stretch it into a rectangle, and then cut it. That's it!

In fact, if doing anything more than that risks ruining the shape and the pretty flour swirls, so once the ciabatta is cut, leave it alone until it's time to bake.

Flip the loaves for extra pretty floury stripes

One of ciabatta's distinguishing features is a domed top with a unique pattern of swirls and stripes of flour. To create this floury pattern, I flip the proofed ciabatta loaves over right before I transfer them into the oven.

When you stretch ciabatta dough out and cut it into loaves, you do so on a generously floured surface.

Most bread recipes say lightly floured, but for this step I generously flour my countertop. More than a light dusting but less than a complete snowfall. Like, you should still be able to tell the grass is green, but it's definitely more white than green. (In this metaphor, the grass is your counter.)

When the loaves rise, they expand slightly against the countertop, trapping the flour in the creases where the dough is still sticky.

Flipping the loaves over before they go into the oven reveals that swirly pattern, kind of like when you fall asleep on a creased pillow and wake up with wrinkles all over your face.

The loaves continue expanding in the oven and all those fine lines and wrinkles on the surface of the dough will spread out, further emphasizing the swirls.

How to Keep Track of What Set of Folds You're On

I always have trouble with this too. Here's a few different methods that have worked well for me:

• Set two timers, one for 3 hours and one for 30 minutes, and just keep resetting the 30 minute timer until the 3 hour timer goes off
• Sticking a post-it on the counter, setting a timer for 30 minutes, and making a tally mark every time you complete a set of folds
• Set a timer every 30 minutes and put 6 M&Ms on the counter next to your dough. Eat one every time you complete a set of folds. When you're out of M&Ms, you're done with your folds.

📖 Recipe