Recently friends asked me to bring an appetizer to their dinner parties. For the first one I prepared Gougères, French cheese puffs, made of a savory pâte à choux, very easy to make but I’ve heard that some people are intimidated by this type of cooked dough.

I used David Lebovitz’ recipe (American pastry chef, living in Paris, with an excellent blog) with the only two changes that I upped the salt a bit and added finely chopped, fresh rosemary to the dough.

The Gougères were gone in no time.

For the other party I made this stuffed Fougasse, a bread I have baked often for get-togethers, and everyone always loves it.

The picture is terrible, I didn't have time anymore to snap a picture at home and at the party there was not enough light.

Dough for one big Fougasse:

350g AP flour
150 ww flour
2 tsp instant yeast
300g milk
45g water
40g olive oil
1 ½ tsp sea salt
Mix and let rise until doubled. The dough needs to be quite moist.

In the meantime, caramelize one big, chopped onion in a little olive oil. Add salt and pepper.
Sauté a small zucchini (or mushrooms, or whatever you fancy) cut into little cubes, add salt, pepper, a variety of herbs.
Chop some baby tomatoes into small cubes, drain the liquid from them. Add salt and pepper.
Chop a few olives.
I basically just put whatever I have around – it always comes out good.

Flour your surface well and roll out the dough into a big rectangle.
Spread about 120g cream cheese (room temperature, you can use full or reduced fat) onto it.
Sprinkle whatever you have prepared as toppings evenly over the cream cheese. You may want to add a few more herbs at this point.
Now fold the dough into thirds, like a letter. Turn the entire rectangle over so that the back is now on top. Take scissors and make slits. Open them a little bit with your fingers. Brush the top with olive oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Let rest/rise for 20-30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F and bake for about 25 min. Enjoy!

I got the recipe from this website. It’s in French, but if you want to make this Fougasse, I recommend that you take a look at it, since there are very good pictures explaining the filling and folding process. 

Last week I tried Hamelman's fougasse with olives recipe for the first time and had a very happy outcome.

However, in attempting to move the bread onto parchment after scoring it, I nearly had disasterous results, since the scoring leaves it without any 'backbone.' So I resolved to do a bake today avoiding last week's hassles by allowing the fougasse to rise on parchment paper.

Trouble is, I was too clever by half in my approach (as the results of my niçoise olive fougasse below attest).

Here's what happened, and, in retrospect, how to avoid my mistake.

The fougasse (a bread of Provence) goes through three shapings after its bulk fermentation:

1- it's lightly shaped into a ball and allowed to bench rest for about 20 min.

2- it's rolled into an oval shape with a rolling pin and then allowed a final rise for about 60 minutes, and

3- picking up the dough, you then stretch it out to about 1 1/2 times its orginal length, and then fashion it into a triangle whose base is about 1/2 of its length. After that, it's scored and loaded for the bake.

My misstep occured in step #2. I lightly floured parchment paper, and then rolled the boule into an oval and allowed it to rise for an hour. Unfortunately, after an hour resting on the parchment, it effectively glued itself to the paper, which made step #3 impossible. In attempting to scrape it off onto a floured countertop, I severely degassed the dough. Ergo the very, very overbaked (shall we just say burnt) middle of the loaf.

With my second bake - a roasted garlic and anchovy loaf - I smartened up and in step #2, I rolled out the dough into an oval on a well-floured surface - not parchment paper. After the hour's rise, I was able to lift if off the countertop without degassing it, and then transferred it to the parchment paper, where I did the final shaping (#3).

You can see the quite different result below.

I get raves about the bread - it's a bit like pizza without the sauce. In fact, someone suggested that a marinara dipping sauce would be a good accompaniment.

I'm surely going to continue baking this. Hopefully, the lessons learned in this round will lead to trouble-free shaping next time!

Larry

Having battered myself attempting to conquer (well...make peace with?) baguettes - hampered by still developing scoring techniques and an old gas oven that simply won't retain steam - this morning I decided to treat myself to something less daunting.  I've been looking at some of the flatbread recipes in Hamelman's Bread, and his fougasse recipe caught my interest.  It's simple and has a pleasing scoring pattern (no gringes, thank you very much).

The bake turned out nicely, I think, and the reaction of my pub companions with whom I shared the loaf was positive.  It yielded a nice crust, and a chewy crumb infused with flavor from the olives and the olive oil.  This is a wonderful snack-type bread that will disappear quickly, as it should.  With its large area of crust, including that around the decorative slits, it's not meant to store but bake and eat soon as it's cooled sufficiently.

I diverted from his recipe just a tad - instead of a small pinch of yeast in the pâte fermentée, I substituted 15% of my 60% hydrated sourdough starter.  The only noticeable difference was a slight hint of sourness to the pâte fermentée the next morning which I enjoyed.

The one challenge was moving the fougasse to my parchment covered peel.  Once you score the risen dough (I used a pizza cutter which worked well), the cuts tend to spring open immediately.  This is nice.  However, attempting to lift the fougasse onto the peel was a nightmare, as the cuts made it impossible to lift the dough without it stretching in every direction.  At first I looked at what appeared to be a hopeless mass, but with some patient rearranging I was able to reconstitute its shape.  In the future, I will probably do the final shaping and slashing with the dough on the peel to avoid potential disaster and aggravation.

Otherwise, it's remarkably simple and the the finished product elicits a very high "oooohhhh" factor when shown off.

Larry

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

I came across this on the French Wikipedia: a loaf filled with gruyere, bacon lardons, and creme fraiche. I thought a fougasse was the flat bread with holes cut in it, but this is entirely different. It's from Foix, in the Pyrenees. Anyone dare to make it?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Fougasse_de_Foix.jpg

Stewart

Hi all,

Has anyone any advice to offer on fougasse? I've only had it a couple of times, at the Standard Baking Co. in Portland (Maine), but I occasionally find myself obsessing about it. They make one that is completely crusted in poppy seeds, sesame seeds and salt, and is the most amazingly decadent (and messy) thing to eat.

I've looked at Hamelman's recipe but haven't tried it yet because it didn't seem, well, over the top enough. His looks more like interestingly shaped regular bread.

Do I just have to over come my fear of fats and just have a really heavy hand with the olive oil? I don't actually know when I'll have time to try this, but I'd like to at some point; Portland is really far away...

Thanks,

edh

I got my copy of the BBA about two weeks ago, and it's been really great, I read through it in just two days and have started trying out various recipes and techniques, Here are some pics of the results, I have been very very happy with them all so far, and below are actually shots of my first attempts at each recipe :)

- Here is a Boule and a Tabatiere made with the Pain de Campagne recipe

- Here is an Epi and Fougasse with the same recipe (Same dough too actually)

- Here is the crumb from the Epi, it was crispy and delicious

- and a crumb shot of the Tabatiere, it was soft and very springy, the crust was excellent

- and finally some Pain a l'Ancienne from last week, it was excellent though my oven was being a little wonky at the time, so it's not as good as it could have been, (And will be next week ;) )