Susan: Cozy Breads For Cold Winter Days Recipe Roundup On FoodieView & Focaccia, My New Favorite Flatbread

My First Foray Into Focaccia

Up until the other day, I'd never made focaccia. When I decided to test my friend Stephen's Quick Rosemary Focaccia recipe for an article I was working on, I realized that not only had I never made focaccia, but I'd never even eaten it. I know, I know, where have I been? I have no idea. Probably too busy eating pizza. You know I love homemade pizza. What I know is that after devouring large hunks of this rosemary focaccia for three meals in a row (yes, I ate it for breakfast, and no, I didn't have it with my meals, it was my meals), I am ready to embark on a focaccia making rampage.

Stephen warned me that focaccia purists may scoff at his crowd-pleasing, quick and easy version which is mixed in the food processor* and shaves hours off the traditional resting times, but I couldn't stop eating it. Warm from the oven, at room temperature the next day, or reheated in my beloved little toaster/convection oven - this stuff is good.** It also freezes beautifully. And the smell of the rosemary-infused dough that permeated every nook and cranny of The Shack while it was rising was wonderful. I'm pretty sure I followed Stephen's recipe exactly, except I scattered a few handfuls of pecorino romano over the focaccias along with the rest of the rosemary just before baking. I also skipped the egg wash. Next time I'll try using only half the amount of yeast.

Apparently there are all sorts of ways to enjoy focaccia - not to mention all sorts of toppings you can put on it before baking. But so far I have yet to get past splitting a warm hunk in half and tucking in a couple of slices of Irish Shannon, my new favorite cheese.

As soon as I find some nice organic grapes I plan to try the focaccia recipe in Local Breads, my new favorite bread book by my favorite bread baker, Daniel Leader. Kevin made it last year when we each chose a different straight dough Italian bread from Local Breads and said it was the best focaccia he's ever tasted. I already have my eye on a couple of other interesting focaccia recipes in some of my other cookbooks as well, and one of these days I'll have to take the time to make a truly traditional version, such as this one by Dan Lepard, as demonstrated by Fanny on Foodbeam.

Stephen's quick rosemary focaccia is just one of the recipes included in my Cozy Breads For Cold Winter Days article for the Recipe Roundup, a new weekly feature written by various food bloggers on FoodieView. I tried to offer something for everyone, from tasty quick breads that are ready in under an hour to impressive yeast breads that are perfect for beginners. Many of you will recognize some of my own favorite bread recipes. You'll find all of the FoodieView Recipe Roundups here, and you can subscribe to them via e-mail here.

FoodieView is a neat site run by some really nice foodies that makes "good food easy to find, whether you're dining in or dining out." Check out the restaurant guides for nine major cities (more will be added) or search through over 1 million recipes from places like Cooking Light, Eating Well, Gourmet/Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Food Network, Sunset, and Saveur. The neatest part about the FoodieView search engine is that you can narrow down your search criteria by ingredient, dish, cuisine, special considerations (gluten free, low carb, vegetarian, etc.), sources, and more, including famous chefs.

As for me, I'm off to check out Michael Chiarello's Country Focaccia With Blue Cheese & Lavender Honey recipe, see if I can locate a source for organic semolina flour so I can try making Jamie Oliver's favorite focaccia, and work my way through some of the other 4,793 hits my FoodieView search for 'focaccia recipe' came up with.

Are you a focaccia fan? I'd love to hear about your favorite recipes and ways you like to eat it. I'm already drooling over the thought of focaccia sandwiches piled high with slices of juicy heirloom tomatoes from next summer's garden. (It's gonna be a long six months waiting for them.) Beth tormented me the other night with a description of the dinner she'd just made: lamb burgers with blue cheese and shallots on homemade focaccia. Yum.


Stephen's Quick Rosemary Focaccia Ready For The Oven

Move over pizza. There's a new flatbread on the farm.

* A word of warning: This is a soft and sticky dough, especially if you haven't added quite enough flour to it. Do NOT reach into the food processor bowl and try to grab the finished blob of dough with your bare hands while the blade is still buried in it. Yeah, ouch. Not that I think you would ever do anything that stupid.

** A technical note about Stephen's recipe: It makes two 8" - 10" round focaccias. I didn't realize until they were ready to go into the oven that there was no way they were both going to fit on my baking stone at once. Fortunately it's winter, so I just popped one into the oven and set the other out on one of the chest freezers on the covered porch next to the kitchen, protected by a large upside down bowl since Smudge the cat (who lives on the porch) was very interested in it. If it had been summer things would have been a little tricker, as I don't usually have enough space for an entire unbaked focaccia in my fridge. If both won't fit in your oven at once and you don't have a cool spot to put the second one while the first one bakes, you might want to halve the recipe.

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where you're allowed to eat rosemary focaccia and chocolate cake for breakfast.

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Kevin: Italian Breads From Local Breads - Focaccia

I was about 12 or 13 the first time I tried baking bread. I produced two whole wheat bricks. I tried again a number of times over the following few years but without any great success. I did produce some decent English muffins — although nothing as good as those I made using the No-knead Bread Dough.

Then in 1981 I'd just gotten out of school and while I was trying to find a real job I decided to make sandwiches and sell them door-to-door at offices. Not content to do it the easy way, I elected to make the sandwiches using croissants. — homemade croissants. Croissants are one of the most labor-intensive breads you can make. After mixing and kneading the dough, you roll butter into it, then fold it and roll it out again, then do it again. The next step is refrigerating it, not because you've finished but because the butter needs to harden again. The process of folding and rolling is repeated at least twice more, maybe three times.

Once you've made enough folds, you roll the dough out one last time and cut it into triangles, which are rolled up and shaped into crescents. Then back in the fridge until 4:00 the next morning at which time I'd get up and move them into some jury-rigged proofing ovens. Back to bed until 6:00 when I'd get up and start baking them while making the various sandwich fillings. I've never worked so hard in my life and I haven't made a croissant since. But I did start occasionally making bread again.

In 1995 I bought a Kitchen Aid specifically for making bread and sausage and at the same time I bought Daniel Leader's Bread Alone, which I proceeded to read cover-to-cover. I learned a lot, so, like my confreres, I was pleased to get a review copy of Local Breads: Sourdoughs and Whole-grain Recipes from Europe's Best Bakers (and I confess, I haven't read it cover-to-cover) and was equally willing to feature it here this month (with no promises that anyone would be happy with the results). Although we'd decided to do breads involving a biga, I decided instead to do focaccia from the same section of the book. I'm fond of flat breads and it's a simple straightforward recipe. Given how busy this month has been, simple and straightforward seemed like a good idea.

One note, the recipe calls for 3 1/4 cups of flour and I ended up using almost 4 cups. I should have weighed it to see how close my cups came to Leader's, but by the time I realized how much flour I'd used I'd used up the last of that bag — and weighing flour from a different bag wouldn't have told me anything.

Grape Harvest Focaccia (Schiacciata all'uva)
Adapted from >Local Breads.

Ingredients | US volume | metric volume | US weight | metric weight
water — tepid 1 1/4 c | 296 ml | 10.6 oz | 300 g
instant yeast 1 tsp | 5 ml | 0.2 oz | 5 g
unbleached all-purpose flour 3 1/4 c | 770 ml | 17.6 oz | 500 g
extra-virgin olive oil 1/3 c | 80 ml | 2.1 oz | 60 g
sea salt 1 1/2 tsp | 8 ml | 0.4 oz | 10 g
Topping:
red seedless grapes 1 1/2 c | 355 ml | 7.1 oz | 200 g
fresh rosemary — chopped 2 tbsp | 30 ml | 0.2 oz | 6 g
coarse sea salt 1 tsp | 5 ml | 0.2 oz | 5 g
additional olive oil

Mixing
Pour water into the bowl of a stand mixer bowl and add yeast, olive oil, salt, and 3 cups of flour. Mix the ingredients on low (2 on a KA) using the paddle attachment on a Kitchen Aid until shaggy, then swap to the dough hook. Add additional flour as needed until a dough forms. Increase speed to medium (4 on a KA) and knead for 9 to 10 minutes.

As I mentioned above, I needed about 4 cups of flour. I'd added about 3 3/4 cups and thought that was fine, and then a strange thing happened. In the last 3 minutes of kneading the dough fell apart. It lost it cohesion as a mass and became something like an exceptionally thick batter. I've never seen this happen before. I added about another 1/4 cup of flour and it came back together.

Scrape dough out onto a lightly-floured board and shape into a ball. Note: I always knead the dough a bit by hand at the end to make sure it feels right. In this case the dough is moist, but not sticky (the oil accounts for this).

Fermentation
For this amount of dough, I typically use the mixer bowl for the fermentation phase. I wash it out and dry it, then lightly spray it with oil, shape the dough into a ball, lightly spray the top with oil, cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 1 1/2 - 2 hours until doubled in bulk.

Proofing
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and brush lightly with olive oil. Scrape dough out onto baking sheet and let rest for 5 minutes. Oil your hands and then stretch the dough out on the baking sheet, if it resists, allow to rest for another five minutes and continue. The dough should end up about 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) and form a rough rectangle about 12 inches by 16 inches (30 cm by 40 cm).

Using the balls of your fingers, press indentations into the dough, then drizzle a bit of olive oil on the top and, using your fingers, coat the top with oil. Press the grapes into the surface about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) apart. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and chopped rosemary. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise until double the height (45 minutes to an hour).

At this point I also began heating my oven to 375F (190C) and positioned a rack in the center.

Baking
Bake focaccia for 20 to 30 minutes, but do take your own oven into account. My oven tends to cook slowly for some reason (and yes, I have verified the temperature with a thermometer) and I baked the bread for 40 minutes until it was a golden brown and the grapes had shriveled slightly.

Cool for about 5 minutes on a rack, then dive in.

This was absolutely the best focaccia I've ever made. The bread was delightfully sweet (and look, Ma, no sugar), moist, and chewy. The rosemary is a perfect flavor pairing with the sweet grapes (an added burst of sweetness), and the coarse salt provide both textural and flavor contrast.

Adapted from a recipe in Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers by Daniel Leader (c) Copyright 2007 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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