Pain a l'Ancienne Rustic Bread

Ciabatta is one of my favorite breads, so I couldn’t wait to try this recipe.

This is one of the most basic recipes in the book when it comes to ingredients. Flour, yeast, salt and water is all you need. It is a little more involved than most bread recipes in the book. The dough needs lots of babying because it is so sticky and difficult to work with, but in the end it is worth it.

The recipe states to bake for between 27-32 minutes. After about 20 minutes the crust was already very golden brown. Since the recipe didn’t post an internal bread temperature, I decided to just wait out the bare minimum 27 minutes to make sure the interior was completely cooked.

I was a little worried because the crust looked almost burnt in a few places. This just made for an even better crispy, crackly crust. The interior was perfectly soft and full of tons of air pockets, which I loved.

I can’t wait to share this bread with friends with just some simple olive oil, salt and pepper

This has been my favourite bread recipe since Peter introduced it in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I've made baguettes only so far, which are better than any bakery baguette I've ever had. The bread is airy, nutty, chewy - just fantastic. They're also incredibly easy to make; all the work happens overnight in the fridge.

Peter has tweaked the recipe for this book, and has managed to improve it using some of the new techniques he's developed here. It does add a little time on the front end, as you do a number of stretch and folds before putting the dough in the fridge overnight. But he's reduced the work when you bake - the dough only has to be out for an hour before going in the oven, and there's no need to spray the oven walls with water.

The result is just as tasty as the previous recipe, and the baguettes I made had noticeably higher oven spring - they were much rounder in cross-section than any I'd made before.