Category: Breads

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Foccacia for People in a Hurry

Big lin­er notes on this one, but I promise, the instruc­tions are what makes this easy. This is great for overnight, but it’s also a deli­cious one you can start at 10am, and bake before 3pm, and be proud of it.  I hon­est­ly can­not get my life togeth­er enough to think about bread a day in advance, but if you can, the bread comes out even bet­ter. Spe­cial shout out to Ulan for proof-read­ing this baby.

Pic­tured is a fonti­na, carmelized onions, and sliced pota­toes with rose­mary. Gone in 60 sec­onds.

The ris­ing times are based upon a warm home, so your times may vary a bit.  I use my oven as a prov­ing box (turn on the oven for a cou­ple min­utes then turn off so it’s like a hot day in there).

The dough has 5 basic ingre­di­ents and we use the “fork knead­ing” method, which is real­ly cool.  The very short ver­sion of the instruc­tions is this:  (1) mix dry ingre­di­ents with water until sat­u­rat­ed; (2) trans­fer to oiled bowl after 1 hour (with fork knead­ing every 15 min­utes); (3) let rise twice for one hour each; (4) trans­fer to 9X13 oiled pan and let rise for 1 hour; (5) dim­ple, driz­zle with olive oil, dec­o­rate and bake at 425 for 30 min­utes. 

Here are complete instructions:

  1. 10:00 am.  Into a stand mix­ing bowl, add the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents.  If you don’t have a mix­er with a dough hook, a reg­u­lar large bowl will do.
    4 cups flour / 515 grams –Bread flour is great for this, but A/P will do very well
    2 tsp fine sea salt
    2 tea­spoons instant yeast
  2. Add 2 cups very warm water and mix with dough hook until ful­ly mixed and there are no dry bits.  If you are mix­ing by hand, use a rub­ber spat­u­la.  Regard­less of your method, you will have a pan­cake batter‑y dough.  It’s 89% hydra­tion, so it’s not going to be firm and will not look pret­ty.
  3. 10:30am Cov­er the bowl with plas­tic wrap or a plas­tic store bag, or (if you’re not an eco-ter­ror­ist) a damp kitchen tow­el (with a rub­ber band around it), and let sit for 15 min­utes.

    [If you plan to bake the bread the next day, place dough in a very well greased plas­tic con­tain­er with a lid and refrig­er­ate.  I use olive oil – and lots of it – and I also grease the top of the dough.  Let sit for 12–48 hours, then skip to step 7].
  4. Let dough sit out in a warm room and use the fork knead­ing method to turn the dough on itself, every 15 min­utes, for 1 hour. This will make a total of 4 kneads with the fork. Fork knead­ing:  using two fork, go around the bowl,  lift­ing the out­side edge of the dough and guide the dough to the cen­ter.  Do this eight times (takes about 1 minute).
  5. When you’ve fin­ished the knead­ing the 4th time, you should see that the dough has lots of yeast stri­a­tions.
  6. 11:30am.  Grease a clean bowl with olive oil or neu­tral oil.  Scrape your dough into it, rub oil on the top of the dough, and cov­er.  Let rise until dou­ble in size. About an hour.
  7. 12:30 pm.  Deflate the dough, and then use the fork knead­ing method, and let rise again in the bowl, about an hour.  If your dough is com­ing out of the refrig­er­a­tor, it will prob­a­bly take 2–3 hours for the same rise.
  8. 1:30 pm.  Lib­er­al­ly oil (and I mean lib­er­al­ly) a 9 x 13 pan with olive oil.  Trans­fer the risen dough to the pan and, stretch it so that it attempts to fill the bot­tom of the pan (it won’t).  Cov­er pan and let rise one hour.  Even­tu­al­ly, the dough will relax and make it to the cor­ners (or you can push it there).  In the mean­time, prep your top­pings, if any.
  9. 2:30pm Once the dough has risen, and cov­ers the pan, you’re ready to dim­ple, dec­o­rate, and bake.  Pre­heat the over to 425.  Grease your fin­gers and with the tips of your fin­gers, dim­ple the dough (like you are play­ing piano).  Driz­zle dough with 4 table­spoons of olive oil, press in your ingre­di­ents (or just sprin­kle with sea salt), and bake for about 25–30 min­utes, or until gold­en.  Serve imme­di­ate­ly, or let cool, uncov­ered, then wrap in paper.

Notes:

  • If you are going to use cheese along with oth­er ingre­di­ents, put the cheese on the dough as the first lay­er, rather than the last.
  • This makes a thick, sand­wich style focac­cia.  If you want thin­ner, use a cook­ie sheet.
  • The more oil on the bot­tom, the crispi­er it will be, but don’t go crazy.  If you don’t want to use lots of oil, use parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
  • You can put almost any­thing on focac­cia, but watery veg­eta­bles make for sog­gy tops and burnt veg­gies.  Con­sid­er roma toma­toes (less water), and dry­ing out things like egg­plant and pota­toes, before top­ping them on your dough.
  • We tried this at high alti­tude, and it worked with the fol­low­ing changes:  addi­tion­al ½ cup water; slight­ly short­er rise times, and greased parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
  • Note that I pre­fer cooked veg­eta­bles, but if you like raw, use raw.
  • Some of my favorite top­pings
    • Fonti­na, caramelized onions, pota­to, rose­mary
    • Rose­mary and salt
    • Shal­lots and moz­zarel­la
    • Piz­za style:  moz­zarel­la, toma­to sauce (or toma­toes), and ricot­ta
    • Sauteed mush­rooms and thyme (then dot with gor­gonzo­la when it comes out of the oven.
    • Parme­san and herbs.
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Kouign Amann

OK, folks, it’s only been 6 years. I’ve been busy. What­ev­er. First recipe to post: kouign amann. Enjoy it.

INGREDIENTS

lay­er­ing ingre­di­ents:
1.5 lbs soft but­ter
2 cups sug­ar mixed with 1.5 tbl fleur de sel or oth­er salt

dough ingre­di­ents:
1 lb 4 oz. all pur­pose flour, plus extra as need­ed
1 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups warm water (about 110 degrees)
1 tbl vanil­la
3 tbl veg­etable oil
2 tbl sug­ar 1 tbl active dry yeast

muf­fin pan prep ingre­di­ents:
1/4 cup but­ter
1 cup sug­ar

PREPARE THE BUTTER
1. Place the soft but­ter into a gal­lon size fre­ex­er bag. Using a rolling pin on the bag, attempt a rec­tan­gle the the full width of the bag, and about 2/3rds the length of the bag. Then place in the refrig­er­a­tor so the but­ter will hard­en. You can do this step a week in advance.

Don’t wor­ry too much about this step. So long as the but­ter is in a rec­tan­gle, you can reshape it once the but­ter is cold.

PREPARE THE DOUGH
2. Mix the flour and salt togeth­er and set aside.
3. in a large bowl, mix togeth­er the water, vanil­la, oil, sug­ar, yeast, and a few table­spoons of the flour, and let sit for a few min­utes until you see bub­bles form­ing (that will sig­ni­fy the yeast is work­ing).
4. whisk in the flour until you have a thick, glue-like paste, then switch to a spat­u­la and fold in the flour until you have a soft, but work­able dough. Add more if need­ed, or less.
5. Turn flour out onto a floured board or a pas­try cloth (I pre­fer the pas­try cloth) knead the dough 10–12 min­utes until it is smooth and pli­able. Knead in as much flour as you need, but do not make the dough ter­ri­bly stiff.
6. Form the dough into a ball. If you are mak­ing the dough over two days, refrig­er­ate the dough at this point overnight.
7. Cut a cross at the top of the dough to assist in the ris­ing process; then place the dough in a large bowl that has been oiled, cov­er with plas­tic wrap (or a tow­el), and let rise for one hour in a warm room.

PREPARE THE LAYERED PASTRY

  1. Once the but­ter has hard­ened, cut the the freez­er bag away from the hard­ened but­ter.
  2. After an hour, turn the dough out onto a floured board. Roll the dough so it is the width of the but­ter and three times as long. Place the but­ter in the cen­ter of the dough and fold the dough over the but­ter, like an enve­lope.
  1. fold the dough into thirds (again), make the 1/4 turn, and roll out again. Sprin­kle an addi­tion­al half cup sug­ar.
  2. Do this twice more to use the sug­ar, and then twice more after that with­out the sug­ar, end­ing by rolling out the dough, but not fold­ing it. Your dough, if sliced, should have mul­ti­ple lay­ers and it should be about 1/3 inch thick (or there­abouts).

PREPARE THE MUFFIN TINS

  1. Brush the inside of muf­fin tins with but­ter and then dust with sug­ar. Sprin­kle the bot­tom with a tiny pinch of sea salt.

SHAPE THE KOUIGN AMANN:

  1. Pre­heat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Shape the dough and place in muf­fin tins.

There are two ways to shape kouign amann, either spi­ral shaped or dia­mond shaped.

SPIRAL SHAPE: using a knife, slice off a strip of dough 1/2 inch wide; roll up like a sleep­ing bag and place in the muf­fin tin (left image).

DIAMOND SHAPE: using a sharp knife, slice a 3“X3” square of dough. fold each cor­ner of the square toward the cen­ter and place inside the muf­fin tin (right image).

Bake kouign amann for 30 — 40 min­utes, or until gold­en brown. If you real­ly like salt, sprin­kle the top with a bit of sea salt. LET COOL 5 min­utes, remove from pan, and let cool com­plete­ly. Enjoy.