Method
First, make sure all your ingredients are assembled and ready to use, then take your loaf of bread and use a large breadknife to carefully cut its top off, making a ‘lid’ about 5cm deep. Scoop the soft centre out of the lid and out of the main body of the loaf, until you have made a sort of ‘bowl’ out of it – you want the sides to be about 2.5cm thick all the way around. You won’t need the inner bread for this recipe, but it needn’t go to waste; just crumble or zap it in a processor to make breadcrumbs, and freeze them for future recipes. Use a pastry brush to brush the inside of the lid and ‘bowl’ with the olive oil, then start to layer your ingredients into the inside of the loaf. You can do this in any order you like, to get the colour and flavour contrasts you prefer, but one suggestion would be to start with a layer of three red peppers (you’ll probably need to cut them to get them to fit), followed by half of the olives, half of the red onion slices, half of the parsley, half of the mozzarella, half of the basil and half of the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper as you go, and try to get everything to fit snugly up against the sides of the bread shell – it’s fine to cut or tear ingredients to get them to fit in tight layers. Now all you need to do is repeat the layers in the same order, again, seasoning as you go, and pop the lid on top when the loaf is packed full. Wrap the finished Pan Bagnat in clingfilm, sit it on a plate and put something heavy on its lid to weigh it down a bit – the shape is quite awkward, but after experimenting we found that we could perch a can of beans on a bag of lentils or rice, and sit the whole lot fairly stably on top of the loaf! Put the Pan Bagnat in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours (for best results, leave it overnight if you can). When you’re ready to serve, simply cut down through the loaf in generous slices, and enjoy a rainbow of beautiful colours and flavours. Bon appetit!