Grape Harvest Focaccia, whole

I spent the day making a couple of sourdough focaccias and a miche that is similar to the Thom Leonard Country French recipe in Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer. The recipe for the focaccias follows.

Fall is in the air and beautiful blue-violet grapes are in the market and I could not resist the cartons of gorgeous, sweet scented concord grapes.  What better to do with them than to bake a grape focaccia.

I baked quite a bit this weekend, but, though it may seem I did nothing but bake, I really didn't. The nice thing about baking, especially now that I'm using the stretch and fold technique instead of traditional kneading, is that there's actually very little hands-on time required, except for bagels -- I'm sure it would work, but I don't want them to ferment that long before popping them in the fridge. So I still sometimes need to knead.

Saturday morning, we had sourdough whole wheat bagels.

I made a delicious sweet focaccia with granny smith apples sprinkled with thyme and sugar. Incredible flavours coming together. It went over very well with family and friends. I think next time I will use a more tart apple.

I also made a wonderful strawberry rhubarb pie with a crumb topping. I love rhubarb and mine is coming along nicely in the garden.

today I tried to make the yeast bread. It's my first time. And it was totally bad! I did what is said in the recipe... 1/4 cup lukewarm water to dissolve the active dry yeast , then mix with remaining 3/4 cup and 2 tablespoon olive oil. sit for 10 mins. Then add 1 cup flour first , mix with salt and herbs, then another 1 cup. The dough is very thin ,soft.and sticky... don't look at a "dough" to me at all. It's very hard to "knead "by hands.

Sourdough Raisin Focaccia

Sourdough Focaccia

Pizza dough using recipe from NO NEED TO KNEAD. Very easy and delicious.