Focaccia - Plus

Sorry I missed the past couple of weeks. Frankly, the response was so good to my last post that it really threw me for a loop. I wasn’t sure how to follow it up.

I finally decided that the best way forward was just to keep moving. So I hope you’re all okay with me going back to food, because that’s where I am this week.

Once again, I’m going to refer you to the Smitten Kitchen website for the finer points of this recipe - including the actual recipe.

I swear this is not going to become a “Julie and Julia”-style blog. I just keep stumbling across great recipes from Smitten Kitchen right when I need them. That’s what happened for this. I was looking for something to use as part of an appetizer for dinner with friends, and came across this focaccia recipe.

I’ve never made much bread – and this recipe is pretty quick, as far as breads go – so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Let’s dive in…

So, the ingredient list is really short. Gotta love that.

Yes, I consider the parchment paper in the background to be part of my mise en place - otherwise, you know I'd have forgotten it until I had dough and oil on my hands. 

Of course, we’ve got the amazing white-on-white-on-off-white photos at the start…

I’ve had issues with yeast not reacting due to water temps in the past, so I did verify that I was within the range listed on the side of the jar.

We typically keep the jar in the freezer, to keep it for as long as possible, so the temp is pretty important.

It looked a little more interesting once the water went in. After all – with flour and water you’re either going to get dough or glue. (Sometimes both.)

After some quick stirring, I was pretty sure we’d dodged the glue bullet and landed in the realm of dough.

A perk of doing this recipe in the summer is that the house is relatively warm, which helps the dough to rise.

No surprise for any of you who have been reading me for a while: I set it on top of the fridge, where the temp is even warmer than other areas.

After 90 minutes, it had pretty much doubled in size, so I opted to go from there. If you let it rise too long, you kind of “use up” the power that the yeast has, and later on it might not rise when it bakes.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, I opted to go with the recommendation of parchment paper on the bottom of my pan.

Which I poured some olive oil onto.

Quick! Rohrschach test: What’s it look like to you?

The next step felt a little odd, and I don’t know why I wasn’t supposed to just do it with my fingers, but I followed the recipe instructions and used two forks to pull the dough from the sides of the bowl, and kind of mound it all up into a ball.

It’s still spreading at this point, so it’s a little like trying to keep pudding in a pile.

Instead of lifting the ball gently with my forks, I eventually just picked up the bowl and dumped the dough into the pan with the oil.

There was something kind of glee-filled about the process of rolling it around in the oil. It was messy as all heck – and felt… weirdly squishy… – but it was also really kind of oddly fun.

This resting period felt a bit like someone hit the pause button just when the movie was getting interesting. But I dutifully set the timer and walked away.

If you look closely at the photos, you’ll see that it did grow a bit during that time, but I have to admit that it might just have ooshed out to the sides a bit due to gravity, not yeast.

I pushed and pressed and prodded to stretch it out to the size of the pan. Or at least the size of the parchment paper…

I’ve always kind of wondered why focaccia had a dimpled top. Now I know.

I decided to skip the traditional rosemary for this one, and sprinkled the top with sea salt and garlic powder.

I did NOT peek at it while it was baking. (Believe it or not) and when I pulled it out of the oven it had some light browning on top, as well as a golden edge and golden bottom.

It’s a little odd that you can’t see the salt and garlic on top. But that could be my opinion simply because I’m used to seeing the rosemary there.

So, how was it?

Oh, as was foretold in the video, I did use this for Book Club with some “bruschetta topping.” (Or, as I referred to it in the video, “Italian salsa.”) The mix is: one red tomato and one yellow tomato, some basil, salt, black pepper, and parmesan cheese.

It was very tasty.

One caveat: Depending on how you wrap this up (and whether or not it’s completely cool and dry before you do), the salt you sprinkle on it before you bake it might “bloom.” This happened to me. The next day it looked like I had little mounds of soft dough on the top of the bread under the loose plastic wrap. It looked a little odd, but no one seemed to mind that when I served it.

*****
Speaking of my Book Club - is there a book you've read where the food was really enticing? Was it fiction, non-fiction, or a cookbook? I'd love to hear what you like to read - and why.