The History Of Ciabatta Bread. (It's A Lot Younger Than You Might Think)

France has the baguette, India has naan, Scandinavia has rye, and Italy has focaccia and ciabatta. While the creation of these breads goes back centuries, one is secretly more of a modern-day creation. Ciabatta is the youngest of them all, with origins tracing back 40 years ago to the 1980s. The birthplace of this crusty, airy, broad loaf is the northern Italian town of Adria.

For context, Italy's other traditional bread, focaccia, is estimated to have been created in the sixth to fifth centuries B.C. by Etruscans in the northern region of the country. The iconic, long French baguettes came much later, around the 18th century. Ciabatta is even younger than the mechanized bread slicing machine, which became widely used in the 1930s.

Ciabatta is a rustic Italian bread known for its crispy crust, airy interior, and slightly chewy texture. Due to its long fermentation process of around 16 to 20 hours, it has a mild, slightly tangy flavor. After baking, the inside remains airy and light, while the exterior is brown and crunchy. It's excellent for making sandwiches — particularly paninis — and makes for a perfect crusty base of bruschetta. Even just dipped in olive oil, ciabatta makes for a satisfying appetizer. It's also an ideal complement to soup and salad. Ciabatta's light yet sturdy structure allows it to hold up to thick dips, oils, and hearty fillings while maintaining a crisp crust.

Unlike other medieval and ancient breads, ciabatta can be traced back to one creator: Former rally driver and champion Arnaldo Cavallari. He wanted to find a way to combat the increasingly popular French baguettes, a top choice for sandwiches. Cavallari spent weeks mixing different flours, creating various dough compositions, and proofing times to create a new bread form that would be iconically Italian.

His final production was called "ciabatta," which translates to "slipper" in English, a reference to its broad, long shape. Something that set the original ciabatta recipe apart was its commitment to natural and pure ingredients. According to chef Mustapha Lahrach in an interview with Fodors, the final mix included five different flours that were not heavily processed from wheat grown with little to no pesticides. Cavallari produced this specialty flour and ciabatta bread in the factory he opened, Molini Adriesi. The original ciabatta recipe contained 75% water, which is quite high compared to other bread styles — baguettes have around 60% — and this is why it ends up with the large air pockets inside.

Ciabatta is regarded as a traditional Italian bread today, and this is largely due to Cavallari's marketing effort in the 1980s. Thanks to the creator and baker, ciabatta bread reached the United States and the United Kingdom before the 1990s and then spread globally from there over the next 10 years. Today, different regions, countries, and bakeries have developed their variations. Some make softer, more enriched varieties, while others maintain a crustier, rustic style similar to Cavallari's recipe.