Pan de cristal
A Catalan bread at close to one hundred percent hydration — almost as much water as flour. Such a dough is practically liquid and demands the reversal of every instinct: it is folded rather than kneaded, cut rather than shaped, and touched no more than strictly necessary. The reward is a crumb made almost entirely of holes and a crust so thin it shatters like glass — hence the name.
Your own work in that: 3 h.
- Autolyse 60 min
- Folding 180 min
- Overnight in the fridge 960 min
- Shaping 60 min
- Baking 30 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneMix flour with part of the water and rest
Mix the flour with 400 ml of the water (no salt, no yeast) and leave an hour. This autolyse hydrates the flour and builds gluten without kneading — at this much water it is the only route to any structure at all.
Ingredients: 500 g bread flour · 480 ml water · 3 g dried yeast · 12 g salt · 20 ml olive oil
Work in yeast, salt and remaining water
Dissolve the yeast in 30 ml of the remaining 80 ml of water and squeeze it into the dough with your fingers, then add the salt. Add the rest of the water and the oil gradually, squeezing the dough between your fingers until everything is absorbed. Water added in portions combines with the dough more easily than water poured in at once.
Ingredients: 500 g bread flour · 480 ml water · 3 g dried yeast · 12 g salt · 20 ml olive oil
The dough barely holds shape — as it should.Fold the dough four times, half-hourly
With a wet hand lift the dough from the edge and fold it to the centre, turning the bowl — one fold from each of the four sides. Repeat every 30 minutes, four sets in total (the timer counts one interval), then leave the dough for about another hour, until it has clearly risen and shows bubbles. Folding replaces kneading and builds strength without knocking out air.
Ingredients: 500 g bread flour · 480 ml water · 3 g dried yeast · 12 g salt · 20 ml olive oil
After four sets the dough holds a dome.Refrigerate overnight
Cover and refrigerate 16 hours. Cold fermentation builds flavour and makes the dough firm enough to be moved at all — warm, it would spread across the worktop.
Ingredients: 500 g bread flour · 480 ml water · 3 g dried yeast · 12 g salt · 20 ml olive oil
Turn out onto a heavily floured surface
Scatter a thick layer of flour on the worktop and tip the dough out of the bowl, without inverting or pressing it. The dough should be full of bubbles — every press releases the air that built up overnight.
Ingredients: 100 g flour · 50 g semolina
Cut into rectangles and do not shape
Dust the top with flour and cut the dough into four rectangles with a scraper. Nothing more — no shaping, folding or tensioning. As with ciabatta, shaping would only knock the air out.
Ingredients: 100 g flour · 50 g semolina
Cut with a scraper, no shaping at all.Transfer and rest an hour
Move the pieces onto semolina-dusted paper with a wide scraper or two spatulas, changing their shape as little as possible. Leave an hour under a cloth. Meanwhile heat the oven to 250°C with a baking stone or an upturned tray on the middle shelf and an empty tray on the oven floor.
Ingredients: 100 g flour · 50 g semolina
Bake with steam at maximum heat
Slide the loaves on their paper onto the hot stone, pour a mug of boiling water into the tray on the floor and bake 15 minutes at 250°C with steam, then remove the water tray and bake 15 minutes at 220°C without steam. Steam delays crust formation and lets the bread expand; the dry heat of the second phase gives the thin, glassy crust.
Ingredients: 500 g bread flour · 480 ml water · 3 g dried yeast · 12 g salt · 20 ml olive oil
Before you start
The flour must be strong
At one hundred percent hydration ordinary plain flour lacks the protein to hold any structure — the dough spreads into a pancake. You need bread flour with at least 12% protein, ideally 13–14%.
What it is for
In Catalonia pan de cristal is the bread for pa amb tomàquet: split, rubbed with a halved tomato, drizzled with oil and salted. Its huge holes and thin crust are made for it — they take up juice and oil without going soggy.
Eat it the day it is baked
The thin crust softens within a few hours and loses all its crackle. The bread freezes well — slice before freezing and reheat for 5 minutes at 200°C straight from frozen.
