FOCACCIA Makes one flat bread By Dennis W. Viau; adapted from other recipes Focaccia is flat. You can t say much else about it, except that it s delicious and people have been making flat bread since they learned to cook with wheat. At the request of a friend, I came up with this recipe. The original request was for a whole wheat pizza dough and focaccia makes a great pizza dough. In fact, focaccia pizza is considered high end pizza. Experiment with this. I think you ll be pleased. Focaccia is really simple to make and there are many alternatives for toppings. You can even make it plain with all-purpose flour or bread flour. As the name implies, it is Italian in origin, and was probably the source from which pizza came as more and more toppings were placed on the flat bread. Some people cut a thick piece into two thin slices and use it for a sandwich. It is almost as versatile as sliced bread. Ingredients: ½ tablespoon active dry or instant yeast granules 1¼ cups (296ml) warm water; about 115 F (46 C) 3 cups + 1 ounce (1 pound/450g) bread flour or all-purpose flour (see Note at end) 1 teaspoon salt 1 sprig (7 in./18 cm)) fresh rosemary (about ½ tablespoon chopped rosemary) plus extra for garnish 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil, extra virgin is best 2 to 3 Roma tomatoes, depending on size (about 5 to 6 ounces (140-170 g) total weight) 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan or Romano cheese Salt and pepper to taste (coarse sea salt is best for garnish and it is traditional in Italy) Directions: Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water in a large bowl and let rest a minute. Add the oil, chopped rosemary, flour, and salt. Combine until dry enough to knead. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth, 3 to 4 minutes. The dough should be moist and it should almost stick to your hands. If too sticky, add a little more flour. Clean the mixing bowl and coat it well with olive oil or butter. Press the dough into the bowl, coating the top with additional oil or butter, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place for about an hour. Transfer the dough to the counter and shape in a large rectangle, square, or circle, according to the baking sheet you are going to use. The dough can be shaped thick (nearly ½ inch) or very thin. Place the dough on your baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise in a warm place about 1 hour. Dimple the surface with your fingers and drizzle extra virgin olive (1 or 2 tablespoons more if you prefer) over the surface, allowing it to gather in the dimples. Slice the tomatoes very thin and arrange on the surface. Garnish with the grated cheese. Arrange the remaining fresh rosemary on the surface and sprinkle with fresh ground pepper and coarse sea salt. Bake 25 to 35 minutes in a 400 F (200 C) oven until browned, longer if the dough is thick. Cool on a rack. 1 The Step By Step guide begins on the following page. 20100424
1 STEP-BY-STEP 2 2 Assemble your ingredients, your mise en place, ready to use. I am using double the quantities listed above in the recipe because I will be making two. One will be topped with tomatoes and fresh rosemary. I am also experimenting with prosciutto and Gruyère cheese. See pictures below. When making something like focaccia, you can double the ingredients and make one that you know will turn out exactly as planned. Experiment with a second flat bread. You might be pleasantly surprised with the results. Although I have a rosemary bush in my yard, here in Southern California rosemary is planted as an ornamental ground cover or shrub in many places. One day I was in the grocery store and overheard a woman asking the produce manager for fresh rosemary. The store didn t have any. It grows in the park right across the street, I told her. We walked to the park and I showed her where to pick her own fresh rosemary. I don t know how the store felt about it, but the lady was pleased.
3 3 I use a thermometer to check the water temperature. Warm tap water is good enough as long as you don t get the water so hot that it kills the yeast. 115 F (46 C) is considered by many to be the optimum temperature for yeast. 4 Sprinkle the yeast granules over the water and let sit for a minute to soak into the warm water. If you know your yeast is active and fresh, there is no need to proof the yeast in advance. To proof the yeast, add about ¼ teaspoon of sugar, combine, and wait a few minutes. You should see a foam developing on the surface as the yeast becomes active. I buy my yeast in bulk and store it in the freezer. Even a year after the expiration date it is still good for baking.
5 4 Pull off some of the fresh needles of rosemary and chop them fairly fine. If you can t find fresh rosemary in your store (or in the park), feel free to substitute with about ¼ teaspoon of ground rosemary. 6 Combine the chopped rosemary with the yeast mixture and the olive oil. This is looking delicious already!
7 5 Add the flour and salt and combine until dry enough to knead. Transfer the dough to the counter and start kneading. After a few minutes it should be smooth and just a little sticky. A sticky dough will make a light and moist bread. 8 Place the dough in a clean bowl coated well with olive oil or butter. Coat the surface of the dough with more fat and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Set it in a warm place to rise for about 1 to 1½ hours, depending on how warm your home is. (I like to set mine on top of the refrigerator.) The dough should rise until it is nearly double in bulk.
9 6 Here s the dough after it was set aside to rise for a little more than an hour. It is just rising above the top of the bowl. 10 Place the dough on the counter and shape it into a large rectangle or round, whatever shape you need to fit your baking sheet. You might need to flour the dough or the counter. You don t need a rolling pin. The dough is moist and tender enough to be shaped with your hands. As you can see from the lower picture, I shaped it quite thin. If you prefer a thicker flat bread, feel free to shape it as you like. A thicker dough would be better as a snack bread and will take a little longer to bake. A thin dough would be more appropriate for a pizza.
11 7 Place the dough on an oiled baking sheet (or use a sheet of baking parchment paper). Cover with plastic wrap again and let rise for another 1 to 1½ hours. 12 Here is where it starts to be fun. Dimple the surface of the dough in several places with your fingers and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil into the dimples (about 2 to 3 tablespoons). Don t use too much oil, as this will make the finished bread heavy and oily.
13 8 Slice the tomatoes really thin (a very sharp knife is crucial here) and arrange the slices on the dough. Remove the last of the rosemary needles from the twig you set aside and garnish the surface with the needles. Grate some fresh pepper over the surface and sprinkle lightly with coarse sea salt and grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. This is ready for the oven. You can substitute with any variety of toppings you might prefer, including thinly sliced meats (see below). One recipe I saw included very thin slices of lemon. Be creative. Heat your oven to 400 F (200 C) with a rack in the middle of the oven. Bake the bread for 25 to 35 minutes (or a little longer if thick), until the crust is browned. Your kitchen will smell like an Italian bakery! 14 Here is the finished focaccia, fresh from the oven. Allow to cool before cutting. Serve this with a bottle of red wine and just snack on it until it s gone. Or serve this along side your favorite dinner. If you wanted to use this as a base for a pizza you could leave the tomatoes off and bake it until done, then top it with cheese and other flavorings, then bake again to melt the cheese. Again, focaccia is a versatile flat bread. Feel free to experiment with different flavorings in the dough and substitute other toppings.
15 9 As stated above, I made double the dough because I wanted to experiment with another way of topping the focaccia. This is prosciutto cut into long strips and Gruyère cheese shaved thin with a potato peeler. This focaccia was baked at the same time with the other flat bread shown above. 16 Here is the finished prosciutto and Gruyère focaccia, fresh from the oven. This flat bread was delicious. We cut each focaccia in half and placed half of each on the table. Then we opened a bottle of red wine and ate focaccia until we were satisfied. (The remainder went home with a friend.) Focaccia is as easy to make as any white bread. The only difference is in the shape of the bread and the toppings. There are many ways to garnish flat bread before baking. Be creative and experiment. This experiment turned out to have a delightful flavor. You can use half whole wheat flour with half all-purpose flour for a healthier focaccia.
Note: There is enough of a difference between scooped flour (plunging your measuring cup into a flour container and scooping out a cup of flour) and sifted flour (sifting flour into a measuring cup until it overflows and then leveling off the top without pushing the flour down) to cause problems in baking. That s why I always weigh my flour. 1 cup of scooped flour typically weighs about 5½ ounces (156g). 1 cup of sifted flour usually weighs about 4½ ounces (128g). 3½ cups sifted flour is (3.5 x 4.5 = 15.75) ¼ ounce short of 16 ounces, or 1 pound, or about 450 grams. 3 cups scooped flour is (3 x 5.5 = 16.5) about ½ ounce over 16 ounces, or 1 pound, or about 450 grams. So, for this recipe I say to use 3 cups scooped flour or 3½ cups sifted flour. 10