Rustic Italian Crusty Bread Recipe Video (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret of crusty bread? ›

The best way to brown and crisp your bread's bottom crust – as well as enhance its rise – is to bake it on a preheated pizza stone or baking steel. The stone or steel, super-hot from your oven's heat, delivers a jolt of that heat to the loaf, causing it to rise quickly.

Ciabatta

The bread was inspired by French baguettes but with a more rustic, chewy texture and a thicker crust. This bread is made with a high-hydration dough that is fermented for a long time, which gives it a unique texture and flavour.

Place the baking tray or tin directly onto the baking stone. This brings a hot surface into (almost) direct contact with the bread you're baking. This helps increase the final rise and also makes sure of a good, all-over crust.

What is rustic bread? Rustic bread is roughly shaped and not baked in a loaf pan. It is usually made of only yeast, flour, salt, and water. It has an “imperfect” look.

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.

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.

Perhaps the most well-known and popular Italian bread, ciabatta is a slipper-shaped bread. It has a unique, almost plasticity, texture, which makes it possible to do practically anything with this bread.

With the artisan bread movement, real Italian breads like panettone, filone, ciabatta, and pane Altamura are popular and are being made over here now. We don't usually have Italian flour and certainly don't have the history, but some of these are pretty good.

Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture. This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.

Why is my artisan bread crust so hard? ›

Uneven kneading can also lead to uneven rising and uneven baking, dense and hard a crust. One way to combat this problem is to rise outside the oven before baking atleast rise 80% before putting it into the oven. You don't specify C or F. 250C, way too hot, 250 F, not nearly hot enough.

Too much extra flour worked into the dough while folding and/or shaping can cause dense bread. Over mixing can cause a dense loaf by the weakening and breakdown of the gluten (not likely to happen if you fold dough or hand knead). The flour you used is a whole grain with coarse bits of bran and grain in it.

Rustic bread is generally lean (i.e. just flour, water, salt, and yeast or starter). It is the addition of milk/oil/egg that softens the crust of the sandwich bread. The steaming most people use when they bake hearth breads also makes for a crisper crust.

Friselle bread, at times referred to as freselle, frisedde, fresedde, frise, are made from durum wheat. Friselle are baked twice and usually have a rough side and smooth side. Friselle are found throughout all of Italy but especially popular in southern Italy (Apulia, Calabria, Campania, etc.).

There are many who like the crunchy crust as it gives a different experience for the teeth and the palette. The inside which is too soft may not taste as good as the crust when mixing with gravy, butter or jam for example. Even without any additional stuff, a hot bread crust is yummy!

Scientific studies have investigated whether the crusts of bread contain more nutrients than the moist, springy interior. 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.

Usually it's gluten (a product of the protein in flour) that determines bread's texture. Bread where gluten plays a prominent role will be chewier. When the gluten level is lower, or when gluten is tamed by the addition of “softeners” like milk, butter, eggs, or oil, the bread will be more tender.

Salt—Salt adds flavor to breads and helps produce bread with a fine texture and grain. When too much is used, it can slow down the action of yeast. Fat—Often called "shortening" because it lubricates the strands of gluten and makes them break easily. The more fat, the more tender or "shorter" the bread.