above, the open texture of a ciabatta, from a dough kept wet with 72% water (assisted by 30% strong white flour combined with a softer flour)

Remember: baking is not a set of separate processes, but rather one single process defined by different stages. Thus, change any part and you will cause changes in every subsequent stage, from mixing to baking. Assess each of the ideas presented below, and work out what modifications are best for you.

Stretching the dough: gently tipping the dough on to either a flour dusted or oiled surface, light pressing out and stretching the dough into a rectangle, and finally giving it a ‘book fold’ before returning it to the bowl, then repeating this every hour or so during the bulk fermentation.

above, even the gutsiest wholewheat loaves can display an open crumb texture

Increase the dough’s water content: with a more fluid dough, it is difficult to maintain a bold, round shape during proving and baking. Some sort of dough containment, such as a cloth-lined and flour dusted basket, or a flour dusted proving board may be needed (a heavy dredge of flour on a wooden board will hinder the spread as the dough proves). Too wet a dough, and it is a problem keeping the slashes clean and open. So for sheeted doughs and flat breads this is useful.

Use a sour leaven, or old dough addition: either in place of or in addition to commercial yeast. I often rely on the combination of a small percentage of commercial yeast (0.5%) and a sour starter (naturally fermented, and used at around 30% to flour weight), as it gives both speed (a bulk fermentation of 2 –3 hours @ 22C, depending on the strength of the gluten in the flour, and a final prove of 2 ½ – 3 hours, depending on the ambient bakery temperature. And yes, I would describe this as ‘yeasted’ bread.

Extend the fermentation with as little leavening as possible: often this requires some control of the temperature, as in a retarding cabinet. I find that if the temperature is kept at around 15C – 17C, this seems to allow tighter doughs to develop a more expansive texture when mixed with a sour or combination starter.

Use a pre-ferment: I don’t know whether to thank either my US or French colleagues for this one, and the method I use depends on the mixer type that I’m using. With a fork petrin, I mix the sour leavening with the flour, mix for 1 – 2 minutes, then leave in the bowl for 20 minutes. Next I’ll add any additional yeast (if I’m using it), mix for a further 5 minutes, then add the sea-salt mixed with a little water, and mix for a further 4 minutes. I add the leavening at the beginning here because I have found it difficult to mix the dough evenly in a petrin. However, after talking with baker friends, I’d suggest that with a twin-arm or a spiral, leave the leaven out, mix the flour and water, leave for 20 minutes, then add the leaven, any additional yeast, and after a few minutes, the salt.

(originally published in British Baker)

Foccacia has a home, in Italy, and a birthplace in the town of Genoa. That’s what Italians from Genoa tell me. But then as every man, woman and child of Italian extraction seems to have a slightly different take on their homeland’s culinary traditions, it is only right that there are many versions of the crisp oily Italian flat bread.

above, the dimples and salt strewn terrain of a foccacia, taking on slightly green hue from the olive oil brushed on after baking

In the most general terms, a focaccia is a thin sheet of bread dough, probably made with Italian ‘00’ flour, dimpled with the impressions from the bakers fingertips, and washed with oil, salt and a little water before baking. There is a tradition of topping the sheets of dough with a simple herb, vegetable or cheese (rarely more than one), but purists deny these variations exist, and prefer the dough kept simple.

There are many recipes for the perfect focaccia, and many bakers who will insist there is only one. So we should look at the possible ingredients, and find the recipe that works best for your bakery. Below is a simple recipe I’m using at the moment, and following that, thoughts on the ingredients used.

The dough

1000g Italian 00 flour (100%)
325g sour starter (32.50%), made with 50% flour to 50% water
7.4g slow-activity yeast (Craftbake) (0.74%)
22.4g fine sea salt (2.24%)
25g dark dry malt (Edme) (2.50%)
50g extra virgin olive oil (5.00%)
50g refined pork lard (5.00%), optional
650g water at 10ºC (65.55%)

final dough temperature around 22ºC

above, a cut section from the focaccia showing defined aeration and thin upper and lower crust

Mix on first speed for 3 minutes, then on second speed for 12 minutes (until very elastic and forms a fine membrane when stretched between the fingers). Tip into a tray brushed with a liberal amount of good olive oil (500g per 10kg of dough), cover with a plastic sheet, and leave at 22ºC – 25ºC for 2 hours, turning the dough every 45 minutes, and using more oil where necessary. Pin out into an oil brushed 4-sided tray, short prove to recover, dimpled with fingertips, brushed with oil/water/salt mixture if desired, sprinkle with extra flaked sea salt, and bake in a hot 230ºC deck, top heat 7–8, bottom heat 2-3, for 30+ minutes, until a good golden brown on top.

The ingredients and method

Firstly, the flour for any flat bread has slightly different requirements to that for a 400g round English loaf. We’re not looking for too much oven spring, perhaps more generous extensibility than strength in the available gluten, and above all we want tenderness rather than toughness. One popular recent characteristic, though perhaps not entirely traditional, is for the crumb to display a wild, open texture. New Zealand baker Peter Burge, formerly of the Exeter Street Bakery, London, created a dramatic open texture in the sheet Focaccia sold at their high street bakeries with strong flour and long fermentation. By cutting a traditional ‘00’ Italian flour with another stronger white flour, such as Dove’s Farm’s excellent Biobake Strong White Bakers Flour, a similar result can be achieved.

above, cracked black peppercorns and cheese melts into the surface of the foccacia, cut here to show an open texture to the crumb

However, be careful in using very strong flours. Sometimes the flavour can be a little thin, and with strength comes a tough bite, so consider their use carefully and reduce the amount of strong flour in the mix until you achieve the result you require. Strong white flour added up to 30% of your total flour weight should suffice. My own preference lately is to use a single Italian flour with a slightly higher strong gluten content.

In this way you get a result made entirely with Italian flour (a selling point), together with a bite and texture that seems appropriate. There is a slight loss in crumb aeration, but the dough flavour is enhanced. Other flours can be used, if labelling with origin of ingredients is not a selling point or concern. A mixture of baguette flour (T55) or traditional baguette premix (such as Moul-bie’s Campaillette) and strong white flour, could be used and will given rather striking results, though might struggle to claim any authenticity.

But one of the key factors that affects crumb aeration is water content. Simply put, the more water the more holes. Firstly, remember that the available gluten in a flour is activated when water hydrates the strands of protein (gliadin and glutenin) which bind to form gluten, and their individual qualities of strength and elasticity will combine to give the final gluten its final characteristics. So different levels of gliadin and glutenin will result in different characteristics to the final available gluten. Make sense? Generally speaking, if a flour can hold a greater proportion of water, its ability to extend and hold carbon dioxide created by the yeast will be greater. And with it, the possibility of more holes in the final dough. How much water? If you’re using 100% Italian ‘00’, then probably not much more than 65%. If using a mixture of Italian and strong white, then up to 68%. If using a t55 and strong white up to 50%, then that can be increased to 70+%.

above, halved cherry tomatoes, tossed with olive oil, sea salt and thyme, are baked on top

Other ingredients typical would be malt (2 or 3%), yeast (up to 1% if using a souring with an extended prove, without the souring up to 1.5%), salt (less than 2% if you are salting the top of the focaccia), and some sort of fat (5 – 10%). In the north of Italy, rendered pork lard is used commonly, and it is a flavour that is particularly suited to the bread. However, given many customers dietary restrictions, the addition of a small amount of olive oil into the mix will be enough. The combination of malt and fat help to colour the bread quickly in the oven, and stops the thin dough drying out too much during the baking. Given the old links between brewing and baking in Europe, the use of malt is also quite authentic in most of our fermented breads. I also add a sour starter to the mix at 30 – 35% of total flour weight.

But it’s also important to fully work the dough during the mixing and to aerate the focaccia dough during the bulk fermentation if this capacity is to be utilized. In a small plant or bakery, where hand skills can be employed, I find that turning the dough in a tray spread with good olive oil, as you would turn puff pastry, helps to introduce more air pockets throughout the dough. Every 40 minutes or so, the dough is very roughly pinned out in the tray, dimpled with the fingertips but not really degassed, then folded upon itself in thirds. The oil helps protect the focaccia dough from the rigors of the stretching. If you get tearing on the dough surface, then use more oil.

To achieve that final open texture in the sheet focaccia, there is one more technique to remember. By stretching the dough into the sheet corners gradually, with short rests in-between handling, small air pockets will also be stretched into long elliptical pockets, which will expand upwards in the oven heat into large holes. Dimple the surface with your fingers while you push the dough out into the tray, but do not go so far as to degass the dough. Rest the dough then stretch it finally into the corners of the sheet. Then let the dough have a short final prove for 15 minutes at a warm temperature (28C+), before baking in a hot (230C) oven, with a little steam, top heat high (7 or 8) and bottom heat low (2 or 3).

above, fresh from the oven (it's actually hurting the baker's hands), the baguette looks taut and slightly burnt on the edges of the tears

…would smell as sweet.

Recipes and tricks for improving your sticks

(Originally published in British Baker)

Recipes for the perfect baguette are probably as numerous as bakeries in France, and each baker appears to claim a secret ingredient or technique that makes him the star boulanger. But do they have anything in common?

Well, flour for a start. A perfect baguette begins and ends with the right qualities in flour. Soft wheat does make for dough that requires slow cool mixing, leaving the mixer at around 22 – 23ºC, creating a dough that is delicate and difficult to handle.

Next, cool water is needed to achieve that final dough temperature. Following that, a bulk fermentation of at least 45 minutes, but often longer. Then the dough is scaled, lightly rounded, left for 15 – 20 minutes, before being shaped with the aid of a baguette moulder and left to proove on a flour dusted cloth. To finish, the baguette is transferred to a peel or a setter, slashed 6 or 7 times with a sharp blade, and deposited on a hot stone to bake. These are the rules of the baguette, set in the stone of tradition.

above, each of the cuts slightly tears, and when sliced the crumb shows an open texture

However, the only way to judge a perfect baguette is by tasting one. Remember the days of the fine English ‘French Stick’? Remember that deliciously tough elastic crust, with a smooth brilliant white crumb and those dainty dimples left from the perforated cradle that the dough sat in, while it baked in its fan-assisted oven? Well, the perfect French baguette is a different beast altogether. We’re looking for crispness in a thin tender crust, a creamy-coloured crumb with an uneven aerated light texture, and the oval circumference and dark base crust only achieved through stone-sole oven baking. The taste should be of wheat with a hint of acidity, neither too sour nor too yeasty.

But to simplify things a little, lets start with a very simple and rather ordinary baguette:

1.000kg T55 (100%)
0.650kg water at 18 – 20ºC (65%)
0.020kg yeast (2%)
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt (2% – 2.3%)
1.690kg total weight

Mix together on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), and then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes.

To be fair, I don’t know any baker using a recipe as simple as the one above. It produces a bread so uniform, and unspectacular, that there is no gain in making it yourself. However, by tweaking the recipe a little we can soon change that.

If we start by making a sponge, we can begin to add character to the baguette by opening up the texture. Here is the way I change a direct recipe into one that uses a sponge and dough. Take a third of the original total dough weight (appx. 560g), and then divide that number in half (280g). Then take that amount of flour and water (from the total quantities) and mix together with one quarter of the yeast. So our new recipe will look like this:

For the sponge:

0.280kg T55
0.280kg water at 18 – 20º C
0.005kg yeast

Mix together thoroughly, and leave for 2 hours (agitating the mixture briefly after 1 hour)

For the dough

0.720kg T55
0.370kg water at 18 – 20º C
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

Mix together with the sponge on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), and then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes. As the sponge is a large fermenting batter, we have reduced the total yeast quantity to 1% of the total flour weight, split between the sponge and final dough.

Getting better, but still not to my mind a perfect baguette. Lets change the flour next.

above, the same dough as in the image below, but shaped into a ball, proved upturned in a basket, and baked with a little steam in a deck oven

Flours such as Moul-bie’s Campaillette and Viron’s Retrador are milled and blended specially to open the texture of the baguette. Changing your flour either on the direct recipe, or ideally on the sponge and dough method will dramatically enhance the texture and final crust on the baguette.

Before the introduction of these flours, I tended to cut the T55 with a little Canadian-rich English flour. This had the advantage of being able to tolerate more water in the dough, enabling the actual water content to be increased from 65% up to 68% (or 70%). This produced a very crisp baguette with huge bubbles throughout the light crumb. Very seductive, but difficult to manage and shape.

So the recipe would change to:

0.350kg Canadian
0.400kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast

Mix together thoroughly, and leave for 2 hours (agitating the mixture briefly after 1 hour)

For the dough

0.650kg T55
0.300kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

above, try and keep the crust colour relatively even - a baguette should display great control

Mix together with the sponge on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes.

Baguette au levain

This is the recipe I use. It combines the use of Canadian plus T55, together with a sour sponge replacing the yeasted sponge. This is not an overnight-yeasted batter, but rather a levain that has been started by letting a mixture of currants, water and flour ferment, then sieving the mixture and refreshing it daily with equal quantities of flour and water.

Let me warn you that producing a sharp healthy levain or sourdough is a craft that needs practice. There is a way around this, by using one of the prepared sour ferments available on the market, or by sending off to a company called www.sourdo.com who produce little sachets of dried yeast combined with lactic enzymes that will give the desired flavour, texture and crumb structure.

At the moment in both France and the US, electric fermentation tanks that keep the sour ferment at a constant temperature with gentle agitation, are becoming increasingly common in the bakeries that aim to produce excellence in quantity.

For the baguette recipe I would keep the sponge at 35% of the total flour weight.

0.350kg sour starter
0.650kg T55
0.350kg Canadian
0.625kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

Four other techniques in use:

A slow, final fermentation at 12-14ºC is especially useful for baguette au levain, and if the yeast is reduced still further allows for a complex slightly sour acidity to develop. Also increases the crust colour when baked

Mixing the dough entirely on first speed, for 15 – 18 minutes, can help develop the crumb flavour and structure. If you have the time!

Mixing the dough on first speed for 3 minutes, then leaving the dough to rest for 30 minutes – 1 hour, before giving a final mix on second speed for 5 minutes. As above.

Delaying adding the salt until the last 3 minutes of mixing. Particularly good if you are using only a sour starter and no commercial yeast

nothing like a batch of cookies to brighten the day

This week’s how-to class is all about cookies and biscuits: soft and gooey ones as well as utterly crisp and snappy numbers; post any questions you have below and I’ll try to help, or if you have a better way, let us know. Look for this Saturday’s ginger macadamia biscuits recipe, so good I made it three more times since it was dashed to the Guardian. Each time the bake urge struck, I’d be doing something mundane like cleaning the book shelves or weeding the herb garden and I’d start to have those sweet crispy thoughts; next thing, like a hard core cookieholic, I’d find myself in the kitchen whipping the butter and sugar.

The terms cookie and biscuit are interchangeable today. The OED has a reference from about 1730 but in Britain we appear to stop using the word cookie in the early 1900s. It then re-entered our vocabulary through American baking, attached to biscuit recipes with previously unheard of richness and delicacy. Dutch settlers took the word “koekje” across to America, but back it came redefined with a generous and indulgent meaning. If a cookie is music then American taught us how to sing and dance it exuberantly. Sure, a well-made butter shortbread or a ginger parkin has a beautiful simplicity but sometimes you want to shake it up. That’s the time to bake a cookie.

I know it can seem like a bit of a bother but nothing you can buy, that’s right, nothing, compares to a homemade cookie or biscuit. There are steps you can take to make life easier, ways to have a batch in the fridge and freezer, tricks for making them softer or crisper. Mixtures can use up leftover dried fruit, a spare egg yolk or white, other fats instead of butter and other flours too.

That’s fine for you but I probably only have time twice a year to bake cookies.

Biscuit and cookie recipes can be broken into stages that can be carried out over days or weeks if you need to. The first stage is the measuring and mixing. This can all be done in one bowl and finished in about 10 minutes. You don’t need to worry about endlessly mixing till your arm aches. Just beat the butter and sugar lightly, beat in the egg (if the recipe has one), stir in the flour and other bits and that’s it. Don’t even sift the flour. At this point you can bake them immediately, fridge or freeze the mixture. Try doing that with a sponge cake. So with a little planning you could bake more often.

But what if I want a home-baked cookie now, rather than in an hour when I’ve left the house or gone to bed?

This is where the fridge or freezer is best. Forget about those tubs of ready-made cookie dough at the supermarket. Just make double then store half in the fridge in a covered container where it will keep happily for a few weeks if your fridge is cold (4C), or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Probably longer but hey, don’t really want to eat stale cookie dough. Though I tasted it once in a tub of ice-cream. Shortbread is best in a block so you can cut fingers from it. Fridge-cold or frozen, I bake straight away in a preheated oven on a low temperature. No need to defrost, but add 5 minutes more to the baking time.

Freezing needs a little extra planning, working out what shape you want to bake them in. I like to roll the dough into balls, lay a sheet of non-stick baking paper on a tray that will fit in the freezer, then sit the pieces quite close to each but not quite touching. Freeze the tray then when the pieces are rock-hard move them into a container or zip-lock bag.

Recipes call for softened butter? You must live in an alternate cake-centric universe where butter lives on the table, always soft and never rancid.

I keep mine in the fridge too. The trick is to cut it into small 2cm cubes, place them in a saucepan (or in a bowl in the microwave) and heat gently until about a quarter is barely melted and the rest solid. Pour this into the mixing bowl, leave for 5 minutes so the remaining cubes of butter soften slightly, add the sugar then beat away. Don’t fear a little melted butter as it will emulsify with the eggs.

My cookies end up too crisp, but my shortbread is too soft. What gives?

There are three aspects to this. The first and main one is the baking time. Bake virtually all cookies and biscuits at a low oven temperature, 170°C/fan 150°C/335°F/gas 3 as this will allow you to add a few minutes more or less to the suggested baking time to suit. For soft-crust chewy cookies, very slightly underbake them and allow for the heat to continue cooking them for a few minutes after the tray is removed from the oven. For crisper shortbread, reduce the oven heat further to a very low 140°C/fan 120°C/285°F/gas 1 and leave them for 5 – 10 minutes longer than the recipe suggests. Some people just switch the oven off and leave the tray inside for 10 minutes. If your shortbread goes too dark at this temperature then your oven is running hotter than what it reads on the dial.

The second aspect is the ingredients used. Soft brown sugar, in addition to a small amount of golden syrup or black treacle/molasses, corn syrup or honey, will help stop the sugar crystallising when it bakes and keep your cookies soft. Equally, adding brown sugar or syrups to shortbread will turn them softer. Rolled oats and oat flour give a soft chew to cookies, as does a little rye or wholemeal flour. The American wünderchef Shirley O. Corriher told me that if you activate the gluten in white wheat flour by rubbing a few tablespoons of water through it first, then leave it for 10 minutes before beating it with the other ingredients, the resulting cookies are much chewier.

The other thing to remember is the cookie jar or biscuit tin, and how you store them. Covering the cookies after baking with a light clean tea towel will soften them if you fear you’ve over baked them, and placing a quarter of an apple in the tin will help to keep them soft. For shortbread, brandy snaps and other biscuits and crackers you want to keep crisp, the trick is to put a thin (1cm) layer of rock salt in the bottom of the tin with layers of baking paper above and beneath it. Store your biscuits on top of this and keep the tin sealed, and the salt acts as a slight desiccant and help to draw out any moisture in the air.

a sourdough is a useful bread to learn to make

Once you get the knack of making a sourdough it will seem as effortless as making a cup of coffee. What I do is keep spoon-sized nuggets of sourdough in the freezer ready to make a loaf whenever I want. The day or night before I want to bake the loaf I drop one of the pieces of sourdough into a bowl with warm water and flour, stir it well, then next day I have a beautiful sour mixture ripe for making the grandest sourdough loaf.

I don’t really knead the dough anymore as time and science do most the work and, taking a tip from Elizabeth David’s “English Bread and Yeast Cookery” and later rediscovered by New York baker Jim Lahey. I just drop the dough into a covered pot and bake it in the oven. This means I don’t have to worry about getting the oven steamy and the loaf turns out picture perfect. You do need to be on hand for the four or five hours the loaf takes, but the actual work you do adds up to little more than 10 minutes. So you’re left with plenty of time to get those niggling bits of work done around the house.

Making a sourdough for the first time

This is the slightly expensive and mildly complicated bit as you have to devote the best part of a 1.5kg bag of rye flour to getting it going. Each day the removal of four-fifths of the old stuff and replacing it with new flour and water will stimulate the yeast and sour lactic bacteria to multiply with gusto. After about 10 days or so, with a little faith and persistence, nature will kick in and you’ll get a brilliant, bubbling, sweetly sour mixture. But don’t give up early! Just keep going until the subtle bubbling of yeasty life turns to a vigorous acidic powerhouse that doubles the volume of the mixture overnight. From here on it will be one of the cheapest and best tasting methods of breadmaking out there.

for the rye leaven

rye flour

warm water

Simply mix 70g rye flour and 100ml water together, sprinkle a 1cm layer of rye flour over the top to stop mould forming, then cover the top and leave for 3 – 4 days. What will happen is any bacteria and yeast will multiply and the mixture will ferment slightly. As soon as you see lots of bubbles the mixture is on its way. Now, every day for about another seven days stir the mixture really well, discard 4/5ths and replace with 75g rye flour and 100ml warm water, and stir again till it’s mixed through.

By this point the mixture should be feisty and acidic; look for lots of bubbles and check if it has a strong sour aroma. Then invert the quantities. Mix 100g rye flour and 70ml water together to a smooth dough, cover the bowl and leave overnight. The following day it should have doubled in size and be full of a network of bubbles.

To freeze the leaven

Cover a baking tray with foil, and scoop tablespoon-sized dollops onto it. Place the tray in the freezer then when they’re rock hard peel them off the tray and place them into a container or zip-loc bag. Here they will be fine for 3 – 6 months, possibly up to a year. Once or twice a year, or whenever you’re running low, take one of the pieces out and soften it in anything up 700ml water with a kilo of flour stirred in. Just keep the seven parts flour to ten parts flour ratio and you’ll be cool. Once it’s bubbling turn it back into a dough with 10 parts flour to seven parts water, leave it to bubble for a day and bingo: more sourdough to freeze for next time.

Making your sourdough loaf

for the overnight mixture

about 75ml tepid water

a nugget of sourdough from the freezer

50g strong white flour

25g each of rye flour and wholemeal flour

Pour the water into a bowl and break the dough up in it with your fingers. Then add the two flours and work everything together with your fingers, kneading it gently in the bowl until it’s evenly mixed through and the consistency of a firm dough. Then just cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for 24 hours.

for the final dough

the mixture from above

100ml warm water, plus more (50ml) if needed

150g strong white flour

25g wholemeal or rye flour

3/4 tsp fine sea salt

Using your fingers mix the overnight mixture and the water in a bowl until there are no large bits floating around and the liquid is quite evenly sloppy. Then simply add all the flour and salt, and mix it together with your fingers until it is evenly mixed together. Don’t worry if the dough looks a bit rough, it will smooth out as it rises. You can add more water if you want more holes in the dough but the loaf will be flatter and not as round. Leave the mixture covered for an hour.

Next, remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly oiled surface and rub a little oil on your hands as well. Knead the dough quickly for 10 – 15 seconds. Though this initially seems an incredibly short knead, it is still important to work the dough thoroughly. Then put the dough back in the bowl and leave another hour.

Repeat this light kneading every hour until the dough is slightly puffy. You can check this by snipping into the dough with a pair of scissors. If you see a clear network of holes, the biggest about 1/2 cm across, the dough is ready. This tip works with any recipe as a guide to checking if the dough is ready to shape.

If the dough is quite firm shape it into a ball and place on a flour dusted tray, place the tray inside a plastic bag. If you’ve used more water and the dough feels soft, then take a tea-towel and rub it with lots of flour. Place the dough inside it then lift the cloth up by the four corners and lower it into a 15cm round bowl. This will force the dough upwards as it rises. Either way, leave the dough to rise by about a half its original volume.

Heat the oven to 240°C/fan 220°C/465°F/gas 9, or as hot as you can get it, and place a large ovenproof pot with heat-safe lid on inside. Take a 40cm square sheet of non-stick baking paper and place the dough in the centre of it, either by lifting it off the tray or gently flipping it out of the cloth. Snip or cut a cross in the top of the loaf then lift the dough and paper and lower it into the hot pot out of the oven. Replace the lid, put the pot back in the oven and bake for 25 minute. Then remove the lid, reduce the heat to 200°C/fan 180°C/390°F/gas 6 and bake another 10 – 15 minutes until a dark rich golden brown. Leave the loaf to cool on a wire rack.