Dear Dennis,

In addition to using Gladys's wonderful recipe, please try putting a cast-iron pan full of boiling water in the oven when you bake the bread. It seems counter-intuitive, as if the steam would soften the bread, but it actually makes the crust crunchier. Our big Italian bakeries in San Francisco actually have steam injection systems for this purpose, but alas, we don't have them in our home ovens. I took the class at King Arthur Flour on artisan bread baking and they are the ones that taught me this trick. Happy baking!

Marilyn, California