"What's better than bread sauce?" Jamie Oliver asked. "Chicken and bacon baked in bread sauce, that's what," he replied. "Do it. Trust me."

The chicken bake can be cooked in one roasting tray, making it super easy to put together (and even easier to clean up).

People who would love an extra meaty bite can add in sausage meat (squeezed out of a couple of sausages) into the bake.

The recipe can even be adapted for vegetarians, with chicken and bacon replaced with cauliflower florets and cheese.

Here's how to recreate Jamie Oliver's delicious chicken and bacon in baked bread sauce meal.

Chicken in bread sauce

• Serves: four people
• Ready in: one hour

Ingredients

• One onion
• 600ml whole milk
• Two tsp English mustard
• Four small bay leaves
• Two large eggs
• Half a nutmeg
• Two cloves
• 300g white bread
• Four chicken thighs, skin on, bone in
• Olive oil
• Two rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F/gas four). Peel, halve and finely slice the onion.

Place the sliced onion in a roasting tray with 600ml of milk, two teaspoons of mustard, four bay leaves and two eggs.

Finely grate in half of a nutmeg and two cloves, and add a pinch of sea salt and black pepper.

Slice the crusts off the bread and reserve, tear the middle of the bread into the tray, then mix it all together. Dunk the reserved crusts in the mixture and arrange around the edge of the tray.

Rub the chicken thighs with a little salt, pepper and olive oil, then put them into the tray, skin side up.

Halve and add the bacon rashers, and roast for 50 minutes, or until golden. Serve with seasonal greens.