There's a certain amount of faith required when following the recipes in Richard Bertinet's new book Crust. The French baker, who runs a bakery and cookery school in Bath, is a firm believer in using a high percentage of water in his bread recipes, which he argues makes for light and airy loaves. Once you get the hang of the technique “You’ll believe!"

Crust, which is subtitled Bread to get your teeth into, is aimed at the general public. Crust's recipes, covering 158 pages, are more advanced than those outlined in his first book (Dough, published in 2005)

The first chapter runs through the basics, covering tools and Bertinet's techniques for working and shaping the dough, before a large chapter dedicated to 'slow' breads. This includes excellent detail on how to produce sourdough loaves, with information on making and refreshing the ferment, as well as recipes for breads made with a liquid 'poolish' ferment and the French autolyse method, which involves letting the dough 'self mix'.

I believe – made some great bread the other day using the ‘poolish’method.