Focaccia baked from the recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. I meant to take a picture when it first came out of the oven, but it smelled so dang good, dinner was ready, and we were hungry!

One of the things I'm having fun with is learning how to use the oven to bake a variety of foods. With a WFO, this is not as easy as it may seem. There's no temperature knob on a WFO, so you can't just turn the heat up and down like in the typical kitchen range. Instead, you have to plan your baking to take advantage of the heat that you have available. This means getting the oven to a high temperature to start, and cook various things as appropriate as the temperature naturally falls.

One trick I've been working on is to cheat a bit and keep a small fire going even after the oven has reached it's baking temp. (Usually, you rake the fire and coals out of the oven once it's heated.) This does two things: It allows me to hold the temp a bit higher a bit longer, and it lets me add smoke to the mix. Here's last weekend's foray into the world of wood-fired cooking. It was hot, we had invited some neighbors over for dinner to celebrate his birthday, and thought we'd do the whole meal in the oven outside so we didn't heat up the kitchen with cooking.

First, there have been several questions about how much smoke a WFO produces. Unfortunately, I thought of this after my fire was already going pretty well, so I didn't get a shot of the smokey first 10 minutes, but here's a shot of the fire so you can see it's going hot & heavy, and a shot of the chimney top. Notice, no visible smoke.

Once the oven is hot enough that the soot burns off the bricks, it's time for bread. This dinner party was kind of a last minute thing, and I didn't have time the night before for the typical sourdough preferment routine, so I elected to build some Pain à l'ancienne per PR's BBA. That only takes a few minutes to put together on day one, then it's directly into the fridge until the next day, when it only takes minimal work to complete. We decided to make it into a focaccia this time, with a topping of EVO, basil, rosemary, garlic salt. The bread went in with an oven wall temp of around 550° for about 20 minutes. Here's the finished product:

Once the bread was out, the oven was still around 500° wall temps, so in went some fresh tomatoes and new red potatoes, cut up for later making into potato salad. I also tossed some oak chips/sticks onto the coals that I had kept in the oven to maks some smoke to flavor the veggies.

Wood-Roasted Potatoes:

Wood-Roasted Plum Tomatoes:

(These were added to some other veggies that we grilled later, but I didn't get pix of the final medly.)

Here's a shot of the WFO-roasted potato salad:

The oven wall temp had now fallen to about 450°, so in went the desert - another peach/blueberry cobbler. I didn't get pix of this one, but I posted pix of one last week. You can see the very edge of the pan in this photo. You can also see how I maintain the coals during this process. I have a steel angle that I slide into the oven to make a box to hold the coals. I add small pieces of wood on top of the hot coals to maintain them and to generate smoke when desired.

Once the cobbler was done, I left the door open for a bit until the oven wall temp fell to around 400°. Then I built the fire up just a bit and added a bit of additional wood, to get things really smoking. Then I loaded some dry-rubbed ribs, and sealed the door almost tight so the fire would continue to smoke without either heating the oven further or going completely out. Left them cook for about 4 hours in the falling oven. Fifteen minutes before dinner, I mopped them with some Jack Daniels BBQ sauce (I gotta learn how to make sauce that good!) and here's the final product -- fall off the bone, don't-care-how-messy-you-get-eatin'-'em good, ribs.

Everything was very tasty, and we never went near the kitchen stove.

I'm gonna wind up fat as a house. ;-(

ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA

My oldest son bought a bread machine in 1988. A, Rube Goldbergesque device that, after a fashion, produced an oddly shaped loaf of bread reminiscent of a miner’s lunch pail: tall where it should be short, square where it should be round, and round where it should be square.  Its white bread cycle produced a soft-crusted loaf, with a crumb akin to Wonder Bread. I don’t recall if it had any other cycle choices. I promptly lost interest in bread machines, and for the next decade remained a smug, hands-on baker.

Until I went rideabout in a 5th-wheel trailer—for six months.

When I was younger I backpacked; I lived out of a sack for a week or more three or four times a year. A 30-foot 5th-wheel trailer has more room than a hiking sack, but not much. But they come equipped with stoves, with sinks, with refrigerators; and the stoves have ovens. Backpacking, one expects to eat freeze-dried grub, reconstituted with water faintly tasting of iodine, and gnaw on biscuits resembling hockey pucks in shape, size, and texture. That’s the price—along with the occasional blister—for the freedom of the trail. An oven’s presence raises one’s expectations. “I can bake bread!” you think. Ha! Fat chance!

My trailer’s oven has a knob divided seductively into ten-degree divisions beginning  200°F and ending at 450°F.  “It’s just like home,” I thought, comforted. I soon learned differently. At 350°F my oven could melt lead, but the crucible had to be placed in the innermost left hand corner. Placed in the right hand corner, next to the oven door, for an hour-and-a-half a Pop Tart barely warmed. My first (and only) attempt to bake bread resulted a misshapen lump, charcoal at its north end, and drooping to  the south. I went to a local trail outfitter’s store and bought a supply of hockey pucks.

In a few months I learned from other RV owners I was not alone. I met veteran trailer-hounds, full-timers, and disillusioned newbie’s, like me, who used their ovens for storage room, a place to keep the picnic-table grill, baseball gloves, or the cat’s litter box.

And then I thought of bread machines.

Reluctantly, with skepticism rampant in every thought, I bought one, but not until I’d researched carefully. A decade after my son bought his bread machine, many bread machines still clung to the miner’s lunch pail loaf shape. Only a very few had by then acknowledged that the common loaf shape was here to stay, and adapted their designs appropriately. Ironically, this trend seemed to be led by the Japanese. I’m not sure they sell bread in loaf form. In my brief travels to the Far East I’ve only encountered bread rolls, and I’ve never seen a loaf in a samurai movie. 

Nonetheless, there was still something lacking: control--control over time and temperature. I solved the first, control over time; I never did solve the second—in the trailer. Once home for the summer, I had my trusted oven.

Control over time: I like to think I invented the dough cycle, now commonplace in bread machines, and the yet-to-be-realized “retard cycle”. It was very simple: take the dough out of the machine, and turn the darn thing off. It’s done its job; give it a rest. Proof the dough in a bowl; retard it in the refrigerator.

I bet you’re wondering how I got the machine to bake the proofed and/or retarded dough. That was simple too. Good thing, I’m not a rocket scientist. When I was nearly ready to bake I ran the machine empty through its early cycle steps, i.e., “Preheat”, “Knead”, “Rise”, and “Knead”. Silly? Yeah, but it worked. Besides, the cat box was in the oven I’d given up on. Listening to the machine’s unimpeded motor whirl while “Knead”ing was soothing, not as good as hand kneading, but still soothing.

I’d shape the loaf, tuck it back into the bread pan—I’d take out the paddles; that made removing the baked loaf easier, and left only two little round holes in the loaf’s bottom—just before “Bake” started. For the final three months I wintered in the San Antonio—my real mixer and oven were in Connecticut—I ate good bread, not great, but I knew all its ingredients to the gram, and having time control I would nurse all the flavor and texture I could out of each loaf’s flours.

Today we still own a bread machine, and it get’s used every week, sometimes twice in the same week. We mostly use the dough cycle. My wife, Yvonne, makes our everyday bread, mostly white or whole wheat, and she too knows the flavor secrets revealed controlling time. She bakes three loaves each time, the machine does the kneading and the first proof. The rest is in her hands. One loaf goes to the breadbox, one to the freezer, and one to our recently widowed neighbor—home made bread is healing, even bread-machine bread. She also makes sweet breads we take to potluck dinners, or give to friends. For those she fills the machine with ingredients, and forgets it until the machine beeps.

I’m the artisan baker. Oops, that sounds arrogant. Let me rephrase. I’m the free spirit baker. That’s better. Most of my breads—sourdoughs, ciabattas, baguettes, etc.—are hand (and Kitchenaid) wrought, but sometimes I use the machine.

This morning, over coffee, Yvonne said, “ Make some focaccia, with sun-dried tomatoes.” I did.

The basic recipe comes from, “Bread Machine: how to prepare and bake the perfect loaf” by Jeannie Shapter. (Y bought it at a Barnes & Noble book sale, for five bucks.) My take is a variation: sundried tomatoes, capers, and rosemary in both the dough and the topping, in lieu of sage and red onion topping only; all else is the same. I put the bread machine on dough cycle. When its finished the dough gets a few minutes of light hand kneading, twenty minutes rest, and directly to the pan, stretched to the corners. After a final proof, nearly doubling, it goes into a 400°F oven. I don’t use bread flour for this recipe, preferring all-purpose flour. The finished crust and crumb are soft: a great sandwich bread. Tonight’s diner is home-cured-and-smoked ham, with Swiss cheese, panini. I’ll mix up some Dijon mustard and honey, but Yvonne won’t use it. The focaccia’s flavor is enough for her.

Most of my breads take 12, 18, even 24 or more hours, but…Let me put it another way. I love fly-fishing, but I still use worms on occasion, and catch big fish.

Here are some pictures of this morning’s focaccia.

Tuesday (or Wednesday), Grandma’s Welsh cakes recipe.

Ready for the oven

Cooling

Ready to eat

Second time I tried focaccia, using Reinhart's Pain a la Ancienne technique at about 77% hydration. Even though, I could bake on the same day, I further retarded the proofing stage overnight in the fridge. This was our Sunday treat. I was impressed with the airy crumb and the natural sweetness that came with the cold water technique. Herb oil just topped it off...

Everyone in my family is HUGE fans of the Spinach Parmaggiano Fougasse that we get each week at Wegman's (my four year old being the most loyal and vocal fan... so much so that he only calls it by the name "good bread" as in, "Mom, can we get Good Bread this week?" and everyone in our family knows what he is talking about). I would love to make a version of this at home for when we run out mid-week (or mid-day... as we just went to Wegman's a few hours ago and he's already 3/4s of the way through it). It's an amazing bread that is brushed with garlic oil after it comes out the oven to cool which leaves a wonderful taste that lingers on your tongue and makes you want to eat the loaf in one sitting.

I was wondering if anyone had tried to recreate something like this before so I don't completely reinvent the wheel. If not, will just start with a basic focaccia recipe and experiment a bit from there (and keep everyone here at TFL posted!). I would also love to eventually add some whole wheat flour to the mix so that my youngest can get some extra nutrition since he's a bit of a picky eater, while still having it be a deliciously flavorfull bread.

Thanks,

Lisa

Hello, I am searching for a type of foaccia deep pan type bread.  Recently, on Food Network - saw episode containing bread that was baked in large pan and appeared to be about 2 inches thick.  It was then cut into squares a out 4 or 5 inches wide and sliced in half for sandwiches.  Does any one know what type of bread this could be????  IF so, what type of recipe would you use????    Thank you!!!!

Since I know you all are going to ask for as much info as possible, I'll get going on it.  The problem is my round focaccias came out like pitas (thin tops, full bottoms).  I used this same recipe for focaccia last week, baked them in round pans and everything came out OK.  I got larger pans, increased the dough size appropriately, formed and baked them yesterday and they turned out OK.  Now these are going to be used for sandwiches so today I used a rolling pin to make them even and degassed/consistent and today I ended up with a bunch of pitas.  Now here's the stumper (at least for me).  One of them was formed identically to the others but was put in a smaller pan (rolled to 10" diameter, put in a 9" pan), and that one turned out as a perfect focaccia just like the ones last week. 
So, I didn't end up with the pita problem when I patted them into circles (didn't use the rolling pin), so I figure that's part of it.  I can't explain why the small one came out OK if that's the issue.

Lots of recipes (Hamelman) allow the usage of a rolling pin, some say never use one.  How do I fix this issue?  Is that the main problem?  Did I mention I'm making more tomorrow AM?

I've got some dough right now ready to experiment so any suggestions can be tested out soon.  Oh, and I'm assuming it's a 'me' issue rather than a recipe issue, which is why I haven't included the recipe.

Thanks everyone, work your magic.

-Mark

Ready to Bake 

Ever since I got a new baking pan (about a month ago), I've been meaning to try my hand at focaccia. So I finally gave it a go today using sourdough starter and tipo 00 flour. The recipe was improvised using a high proportion of starter (100% hydration) to make a slack 73% hydration dough enriched with olive oil.  Bulk fermentation only took 2 hours followed by another 45 minutes in the pan. Not having any fresh herbs to hand, I made do with some pesto and dried herbs. 

This is the second time I've made focaccia (the first time was a commercial-yeast version I made several years ago)...and I think it turned out OK. It's a shame the bottom crust didn't get as coloured as the top. In retrospect I think I should have used a slightly lower heat and not lined the pan with baking parchment. 

Cheers,

FP