To get the underside of bread browned you can bake it on a pizza stone (well preheated for at least 1/2 hour).

If you have a fan assisted oven turn off the fan. I find that my conventional oven browns things more.

The egg wash will give a lot of color too. So omitting that will result in considerably lighter color.

And if your bread was not cooked through you may have to leave it in for longer (or/and crank up the temperature a bit).

Last edited by SusanneH (Fri 05 Dec 08 3:23pm)

I hope it helps. I have no idea about Maltese cooking, but have baked my own bread for some time now.

The dough is made from American, high-gluten, hard-wheat flour mixed
approximately 60:40 with European soft wheat, salt, water and yeast. Moreover,
Maltese bread is made by a system of sour dough, or mother dough, descending
from one days’ dough to the next.  Maltese traditional ovens (forn) in made of quarry stone and its pretty hard to get the same result in any other type of oven.

Memories 5 of my uncles where bakers and I used to spend all my summer holidays going round all the bakeries. Oh I was born and bread (hic) in Casal Fornio in Malta, that is what Melton Mowbrey is to Pork Pies

......I would love to see photos of the bread your family makes in Malta or their bakeries on the 'blog' section!...........
so do I

Last edited by Grand_Ma (Fri 14 Sep 12 9:16pm)

Hi and sorry for saying this after a thread has died BUT you will not have an exact copy of the bread ( ie . the crust ) because of not having a pizza like stone oven that the bakers have ( amongst other things like the secret recipies they have ) . Anyways , the inside of the bread is very airy and the reason 4 that is because the dough sits for 4 hours and not 1 like stated . it is vital for the texture which makes it unique .

this is their daily routine : 1 am they start the making the process leave it for 4 hours ,  heat oven at 3am , start baking at 5 am then and in 15 minutes theyd have a couple hundreds going out every 12 minutes .

i was lucky enough to get the recipe and see the daily routine of 1 of these local bakers . if you have , try a 28 gram portion in a domestic home pizza dome , it will get you closer to the round-ish look and crust .