Crusty chew Rustic Italian Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret of crusty bread? ›

Bake your bread in a Dutch oven or an oven-safe pot with a lid for about 20 minutes, then remove the lid for the remainder of the baking time. The lid is the important part, you want to trap the steam from your bread which will create a crisp crust!

Wetting and covering it right out of the oven will give you a chewy crust. If you bake the bread in a fitting pan and tweak the recipe, you can get thin, almost non-existant crust, but also soft, like sandwich bread.

Although a little vague like artisan bread, the general consensus is that rustic bread is not shaped with a pan and it is only made with simple ingredients such as just flour, water, salt, and yeast (or starter). Rustic bread is usually baked at a higher temperature which results in a thicker crust.

Cloth, being breathable, retains less moisture; the disappointment is that this doesn't translate into a crispy crust, but rather a hard one. So if you want to store bread for a day or so at room temperature, plastic or foil (rather than cloth) is the way to go.

As the loaf cools, any moisture which is left in the loaf escapes through the crust as steam and this is what causes the softening.

Palm down, slide your hands under dough and lifting carefully place on to a hot pizza stone. Bake at 500°F for 4 minutes. Remove from oven and top with your favorite toppings (don't go too crazy with the toppings, a little goes a long way). Return to oven for 6-8 minutes.

To achieve that crispy golden crust you want all that steam that comes out of the bread when it hits the hot oven to shoot up at the top of the dutch oven, hit the surface, and come right back down. It also helps your bread cook more evenly since you are essentially baking it in an oven, within an oven.

It sounds obvious, but bread generally needs to be baked at a high temperature. A golden-brown, glossy crust is achieved when sugars and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in the dough react together at high temperatures in the oven. For a simple dough of flour, water, salt and yeast, bake at 220 – 225C.

High hydration dough: I prefer to use a dough that is around 75% hydration (the percent of water relative to the amount of flour). This will encourage a lot of gas bubbles, a chewy crust and a complex flavor.

What is the best flour for chewy bread? ›

More gluten (stronger flour), higher hydration and better development of the gluten (autolyse, s&f,...) might help. If you add pure gluten to the flour it can very easily get too chewy. Durum flour also gives a good chew. For pan loaves, especially with rye breads, coarsely cut groats are the way to go.

The flour you used may have contained too much protein. Protein is one of the ingredients that help yeast bread brown. Use bread flour that is purchased at a grocery store or a national brand of all-purpose flour.

Ciabatta. Ciabatta is a rustic Italian loaf that's filled with tons of irregularly-shaped air pockets. It's super crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside, making it an ideal choice for making sandwiches.

A “tight crumb” aka small holes in the interior of your bread can be the result of different factors: under-fermenting, over-fermenting, and a lack of gluten development. The most confounding part of sourdough bread baking is that the rise times of recipes are just a suggestion or range.

TAP THE BOTTOM OF THE BREAD

You can check your bread for doneness by removing it from the pan and tapping the bottom. When you tap the bottom of a loaf of bread that is done baking, the sound will be hollow.

Creating the perfect steamy, hot environment is essential to getting a rich, dark sourdough crust. As a home baker, using a Dutch Oven is the easiest and most consistent way to create the steamy environment needed to bake great sourdough bread.

Glazes are used to produce different effects on bread crust. Spraying dough with water or brushing with a mixture of 2 tablespoons beaten egg white and 1/2 teaspoon water produces a crisp crust. A whole egg lightly beaten with 1 teaspoon of water, produces a shiny golden crust.

It sounds obvious, but bread generally needs to be baked at a high temperature. A golden-brown, glossy crust is achieved when sugars and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in the dough react together at high temperatures in the oven. For a simple dough of flour, water, salt and yeast, bake at 220 – 225C.

The short answer is: yes, bread crusts do contain more nutrients. The reason for this is that the baking process causes the exterior of the bread to become firmer and more browned. This chemical baking process also results in changes to the nutrients in the crust of bread.