The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

focaccia

Doc Tracy's picture
Doc Tracy

I found this recipe called "The Easiest Focaccia in the World" posted online and I have to say they may be right. I was looking for something really easy to accompany a thin sliced sirloin and freshly picked garden salad. (sorry Northerners!!) Anyway, it doesn't get any easier than this.

Here is my slightly modified version. (added the whole wheat)  I apoligize, I had to add some flour and I'm not quite sure what the end flour weight is so you'll have to add to the original amount until you get it to come off the sides of the mixer.

100 grams WW flour

350 grams AP flour

2 tsp instant yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

13.5 fluid oz warm water

Mix in the KA blender on speed 4 for 10 minutes. During this time I watched and had to add about 1/2 cup off flour in small increments until the sides of the dough didn't stick but the bottom was still sticking to the bowl.

Let rise in oiled bowl until almost tripled. This took about 45 minutes.

Put on silpat with cornmeal (or oiled parchment, oiled baking pan). I put the silpat into a "half cookie sheet" as that is what will fit into my camper oven. Spread the dough out gently. This fit my half sheet perfectly. It will be about 1" thick.

Spread with about 1/4 cup olive oil. I used a mixture of 2 cloves fresh garlic, some fresh parsley/thyme (from the garden) and a little sprinkle of red sea salt. I spread the thyme/parsley/garlic mixture onto the bread and dimpled it with my fingers. Then a light sprinkle of asiago cheese. Let dough double in pan, about 30 minutes.

Into the oven (probably about 450 but who knows with the camper oven?) for about 20 minutes. Results, tasty light focaccia bread to eat with our tender, fresh garden salad, homemade Meyer lemon vinagrette and thin sliced sirloin steak on the grill.

Until next time. It's 65 degrees and sunny here at RV World, Mesa, AZ!

DerekL's picture
DerekL

Focaccia

 

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!

ClimbHi's picture

One fire -- Many foods

August 18, 2009 - 6:07am -- ClimbHi

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.

davidg618's picture
davidg618


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

hazimtug's picture

Focaccia Genovese

March 8, 2009 - 9:15am -- hazimtug

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...

foolishpoolish's picture
foolishpoolish

[DELETED BY AUTHOR]

LeadDog's picture

Grape Harvest Focaccia?

July 20, 2008 - 1:38pm -- LeadDog

Last week was the first time I had ever seen, tasted, or baked Focaccia.  I followed the direction to the letter and the bottom was a very dark brown, burnt.  This week I used a Pizza stone and it came out just right.  I looked high and low all over the place for a Whole Wheat Sourdough Focaccia recipe and didn't find one so I made my own up.  In "Local Breads" I saw the recipe for "Grape Harvest Focaccia" so I decided to add the grapes since mine are ripe.

merrybaker's picture

Herbs fell off focaccia!

June 1, 2008 - 12:49pm -- merrybaker

I tried to top a focaccia with whole sage leaves. I let the dough rise, spread it with olive oil, dimpled it, and put on the leaves in a pretty pattern. In the oven the leaves got all crispy and delicious. Yum! But when I picked up a slice to eat, all the leaves fell off. The same thing has happened with rosemary, but to a lesser extent. Must I brush the dough with egg-wash? Then how would I get the oil on top? Thanks!

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