Sandwiches anyone?
I’m a bread baker. I enjoy the process–all that kneading feeds my soul. It’s cathartic for me, particularly during these difficult times.
Every week I bake sourdough using my 20-something starter Kellyanne. (It is a conceit of sourdough bakers to name their starters.) I also bake milk bread and a variety of other non-sourdough loaves. No commercial breads in my kitchen!
This week I got the itch to make focaccia. I’ve seldom baked it but found an interesting recipe in a cookbook I’ve recently added to my burgeoning collection.
Focaccia has an interesting history–dating back to Roman times according to food historians. Roman bakers baked flat breads called panis focacius directly on their hearths; it was a cheap and easy bake and became a kind of Mediterranean fast foods Over time, the leavened bread we think of as focaccia today became an Italian specialty in the area of Genoa. Some believe that pizza was popularized later as a variant of focaccia.
This focaccia recipe is from the cookbook Veg Forward by Susan Spungen. You can order this cookbook through your local bookstore and from Amazon here.
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. This is a plain recipe spiced with fresh rosemary and topped with a generous sprinkling of Parmesan and a generous drenching with the best extra virgin olive oil you have in your kitchen. From there, you could try all sorts of other interesting toppings. Tomatoes, garlic, and other herbs are commonly used but focaccia is sometimes baked sweet with raisins and honey. Pine nuts make a nice (but pricey) topping, too.
Focaccia is sometimes served plain and warm dipped in milk or cappuccino for breakfast or as an accompaniment for an Italian meal. Here, I’ve sliced it thick and used it for an indulgent sandwich of good cheese, pickles, and avocado. I slathered my sandwich with a new favorite piquant Peruvian Pepper Jam distributed under the Divina brand. It is spicy and sweet and made with piquillo peppers, limo peppers, sugar and lime juice–perfect (and beautiful!) spread on a sandwich.
If we’ve gotten you in the mood to bake bread, you could look at some of the other bread recipes on Blue Cayenne. We’ve got Jalapeno Cheddar Bread, Hokkaido Milk Bread, Raisin Bread, Nan-E Barbari Persian Flat Bread and some killer Banana Bread recipes.
Focaccia
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 C. lukewarm water
- 1 1/2 t. instant dry yeast
- 5 C. all-purpose flour
- 4 t. kosher salt
- 6 T. extra-virgin olive oil (divided)
- 1/3 C. grated Parmesan cheese (or more to your taste)
- Fresh rosemary
- Flaky sea salt (for the top of the bread)
Directions
- Step 1 Sprinkle the yeast onto the surface of 2 1/2 C. lukewarm water in a large bowl. Stir. Let this sit on your counter for about 5 minutes.
- Step 2 Sift flour and salt together in another bowl.
- Step 3 Using a spatula, stir the flour/salt mixture into the yeast water until you have a dough. Take 1 T. of the olive oil and drizzle it around the edge of the bowl. Then, lift the dough to let the oil run down underneath the dough. Turn the dough over a few times with your hands to distribute the oil on the surface of the dough. Once this is done, drizzle another tablespoon of oil on the top of the dough and cover the dough with plastic wrap. You have two options here: refrigerate the dough for up to 12 hours or let it proof on your counter for about 2 hours to let it double in size.
- Step 4 Once you are ready to proceed, reach underneath the dough with your hands and proceed to fold the dough four times by turning the dough over on itself. Each time your fold the dough, give it a quarter turn. You want to deflate the dough by doing this and you want to create some structure in the dough.
- Step 5 Use a 9 by 13 inch shallow metal pan with sides. Pour 2 T. of olive oil into the pan and, using your hands, distribute the oil across the surface of the pan. Set aside.
- Step 6 Remove your dough from the bowl and set it into your oiled pan. Oil a piece of plastic wrap and cover the dough. Let the dough rest and double in size. This will take 1 to 2 hours depending upon the temperature in your kitchen.
- Step 7 Meanwhile, heat your oven to 450 degrees F. and put a rack in the middle of the oven.
- Step 8 Take your dough that has now doubled in size and drizzle the dough with the remaining 2 T. of olive oil. Put a little oil on your hands. Dimple the dough deeply with your fingers until you have dimples all over the dough that are pressed down to the bottom of the pan.
- Step 9 Sprinkle the dimpled dough with the grated Parmesan cheese and the fresh rosemary leaves. (You can add other toppings at this point.) Bake your focaccia in your heated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. You want the top of your focaccia to be a pretty brown. Remove from the oven and, when the pan is cool enough to handle, use a spatula to remove the focaccia from the pan. Let it cool further on your counter or enjoy a warm piece of the bread.
