This recipe yields a small boule adequate for a small family of 2-3 people and keeps well for a few days.

Ingredients

1.75 cup - ciabatta flour (or a strong white flour)

0.25 cup - light rye flour

1 cup - warm water

0.25 teaspoon - yeast (fresh yeast or / dried yeast)

1.5 teaspoon - Maldon sea salt

Method

Measure and mix all the dry ingredients above in a bowl. Add the warm water gradually to form a moist mixture.

If using fresh yeast, I have tried both method of rubbing the yeast into the flour as well as dissolving the yeast first in the warm water. Both method works but I find dissolving the yeast in water first gives a more even mix.

Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it in a draught free location.

After about 8-10 hours, when you see all the bubbles begin to form on top of the dough like honeycomb structure, it should be very moist and stringy. Use a spatula to fold the dough through a couple of times to knock back the air. Cover.

After another 4-8 hours, lightly flour a work top, and fold the bread and shape. If the bread mixture is very wet, you may need to use a bit of flour during shaping.

Place dough on baking parchment, cover and with a floured tea towel and let the dough rise. After about 1 hour, check the dough by giving it a gentle tiny poke and it should leave a slight indentation. If it doesn't give it about 30 minutes - an hour.

Place cast iron pot with cover into oven and preheat At 230 degrees Celsius. After about 15-20 minutes, lightly score the top of the bread (don't cut through) with a sharp knife. Normally I score a cross shape. Take the very hot enamel pot out of the oven, uncover the lid and quickly transfer the dough together with the parchment paper that it has been proving on into the pot. Put the lid back on.

Bake for 30 minutes lid on, then take the enamel pot out of the oven and remove the lid. Bake for a further 10-15 minutes until the boule reaches a lovely deep caramel colour.

Take the enamel pot out of the oven and lift the parchment paper together with the baked bread boule on to a cooling rack.

It takes about 2-3 hours before the bread completely cools, slice up and tuck in!