Overview
• Yield: Six 1-lb/450-g slabs focaccia
• Desired Dough Temperature: 85˚F/30°C
• Mixing Time: 40 minutes
• Bulk Fermentation: ~3 hours
• Proofing Time: ~1.5 hours
• Baking Time: ~25 minutes
• Cooling Time: ~15 minutes
12 Hours before the Bake
Mix your poolish (see below).
12.5 oz/350 ml 75˚F/20°C water
12.5 oz/350 g white bread flour
1/2 tsp/2 g instant yeast
Baking Day
1 lb 8.75 oz/700 g poolish
1 lb 10.5 oz/740 ml 90˚F/32°C water
5 oz/155 ml extra-virgin olive oil
2 lb 4.5 oz/1 kg white bread flour
4 tsp/28 g fine sea salt
1 1/4 tsp/5 g instant yeast
In a large mixing bowl, combine your poolish, water and olive oil, and remember to keep that water warm to give your yeast a comfortable atmosphere to grow. Then, dump your flour on top of the liquid ingredients, and mix it by hand for about 30 seconds, until it comes together in a shaggy mass. Don’t forget to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl regularly; you want all of that flour hydrated and don’t want to see any dry spots. Set aside in a warm place, at least 80˚F/25°C, for 30 minutes. If you’re having trouble finding your warm place, it’s time to use your trusty heat lamp.
Sprinkle the salt and yeast on top of the dough and grab a four-finger pinch of the dough and pull. It should stretch out like chunky taffy rather than just tear off. Incorporate the salt and yeast into the dough, continuously pushing the sides of the dough into the middle while turning the bowl. After a minute of this, the dough should be pulling away from the sides of the bowl and developing a bit of a sheen, and you shouldn’t feel any crunchy salt crystals. This dough will be significantly looser, or wetter, than other recipes in this book. Cover the bowl, and put it in your warm place for 30 minutes.
Turn your dough onto a lightly floured surface and give it your four-fold (see below). It should make a tight little package and after every fold the dough’s volume should increase. It should consistently feel warm and active. Roll the dough over and place it, seam side down, back into the bowl. Repeat every 30 minutes (you’ll fold the dough four times in total). After the fourth fold, leave the dough alone to develop volume for the last hour; those bubbles are what will make up the nice, open crumb of your focaccia. You’re looking for the dough to be strong but puffy, warm to the touch and able to hold a fingerprint when pressed into the surface. The whole process will take about 3 hours.
When the dough is ready to divide, turn it out onto a well-floured work surface—this dough is a bit sticky, so some extra flour is necessary here. Divide it into six 1-pound/450-g pieces, and gently preshape each one into a stubby batard (see below). You’ll want to keep those edges squared rather than tapered off so you can get a nice rectangular final shape to your focaccia. Let these pieces rest, covered with a cloth, for at least 1 hour.
While your dough is proofing, place your baking stone on the lowest rack in your oven, and your cast-iron pan on the highest rack. Preheat the oven to 450˚F/230°C. When the dough is totally relaxed and you can press your finger into the surface and the print holds, you’re ready to top and bake them— otherwise known as “the fun part.”
It’s easiest to top your focaccia slabs right on the peel, so you can easily slide them onto your baking stone. If you’re concerned about toppings dropping into the oven, line the peel with parchment paper and shape the focaccia on top of that. While the dough is still on the table, pat a loaf out until it is almost completely flat; then transfer it to the peel. Using your fingertips, dimple the surface while stretching out the dough to form a thin, rough rectangle. Top the focaccia with whatever topping you like (suggestions follow). Now, grab three ice cubes from the freezer. Being careful to not keep the oven door open too long and let the heat out, open the oven, slide your focaccia onto the stone, throw the three ice cubes into the cast-iron pan and close the door. Bake until the exposed crust is golden brown, about 25 minutes. Consume immediately!
Top
Your Focaccia!
Sea Salt and Herb
This is a very simple, but classic topping, and there aren’t many rules to making it. Before loading your slab into the oven, dimple the surface with your fingers, drizzle with a good olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt, or kosher salt if you don’t have sea salt on hand. Only the heartiest of herbs, like rosemary, should go onto the focaccia before you put it into the oven (they can handle the heat and retain aroma after cooking).
Otherwise, sprinkle on a few pinches of coarsely chopped fresh herbs of your choice while the loaf is still warm. This topping is not heavy enough to hold the surface down, so you may want to give the dough another 30 minutes or so to proof before throwing it in the oven.
Sweet Corn and Cherry
This is such a wonderful topping when it’s late summer and corn, cherry tomatoes and basil are in abundance at farm stands or in your garden plot. Toss all of the ingredients together and spread generously on your slab—and leave a few fingersful in the bowl to scoop into your mouth. It’s a pre-focaccia amuse bouche.
2 cups/320 g cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 ears corn, kernels cut off the cobs
6 large leaves fresh basil, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp/30 ml extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp/3 g kosher salt
Mix everything together, spread evenly on the focaccia and bake as directed.
Gold Potato and Black Pepper
Growing potatoes in our garden was a fantastic experiment we tried one recent summer, and it resulted in bags of beautiful spuds that lasted us all of a month. Slice them as thinly as you can for the focaccia, even using a mandolin if you have one. You’re looking for the edges to brown and crisp up during their time in the oven. Too-thick slices will just become soggy.
Coarsely ground black pepper
2 to 3 large Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced very thinly (⅛ inch/3 mm)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Dimple the surface of the focaccia, then sprinkle lightly with a layer of black pepper. Layer the potatoes in an overlapping fashion up and down the length of the slab until completely covered. Sprinkle again with black pepper and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Bake until the edges of the potato have curled and browned, and the crust is golden.
Roasted Mushroom and Onion
There is no doubt that mushrooms, onions and thyme are a combo Andy would put on just about everything if he could. No big surprise that focaccia is pretty awesome with it as well. It got top scores at our focaccia tasting party.
1 1/2 lb/700 g mixed fresh mushrooms (button, shitake, oyster and so forth), cut to similar sizes
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tbsp/15 g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp/3 g fine sea salt
1 large onion, peeled and sliced
1/4-inch/5-mm thick
Extra-virgin olive oil
Preheat the oven to 400˚F/200°C. Toss the mushrooms with the thyme, butter and salt. Arrange in the center of a sheet pan. Place the onions around the mushrooms on the sheet pan and drizzle the onions with olive oil. Roast until the mushrooms and onions start to brown and have lost much of their moisture but are not completely cooked. Cool, and layer the mushrooms and onions on top of your focaccia just before baking.
Tomato and Dressed Greens
There’s a restaurant near our house that offers a “Caesar Salad Pizza” that we think is just awesome. Hot crustiness with a crisp, cool salad dropped on top—there you go. It works especially well if you put the greens on the focaccia and serve it immediately, so you get the full contrast.
4 or 5 roma tomatoes, or 2 or 3 large heirloom beefsteak tomatoes, sliced 1/4-inch/5-mm thick
Fine sea salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
Local arugula, mizuna or other fresh lettuce
Red Wine Vinaigrette or your house dressing of choice
Dimple the surface of the dough with your fingertips and lay the tomatoes down. Do not overlap—they’re much too waterlogged to stack on top of one another. Sprinkle with salt and drizzle with olive oil before baking; they’ll still be moist when the sides of the crust are golden brown. After removing from the oven, dress your greens with the vinaigrette and pile on top of the still-hot slab. Cut into large slices and serve.
Poolish
A
poolish is
a traditional French starter that is 100 percent water, and is named
after the Polish, though no one can really explain why. Remember
those strange bakers’ percentages and how they’re based on the
percentage of flour? That 100 percent means that it has exactly the
same amount of water as flour. This adds strength and flavor to the
dough. We generally use a poolish in doughs that have a lower
percentage of water in the final recipe, to encourage a large, open
crumb.The Four-Fold Technique: the Key to Great Dough Made at Home
This is really the crux of building good dough strength at home. Rather than kneading and kneading and kneading the dough at the mixing stage, it is more beneficial to most dough (and to most home bakers) to develop its strength over the course of the entire fermentation period. By giving the dough a series of timed folds interspersed by periods of rest, we can build a beautifully developed dough while monitoring its progress throughout the fermentation period. And it’s incredibly easy, it keeps you in touch with your dough as it moves along so that you can learn from it and it makes great bread. Here’s how it works:
1. Using your fingers or a bowl scraper, gently turn the dough out onto a floured counter.
2. Using the pads of your fingers (not the sharper tips), grasp the left side of the dough and bring it about two-thirds of the way across the rest of the dough. Brush away any excess flour that may have come from the table. Do the same for the right side.
3. Bring the bottom section up toward the middle and, finally, bring the top down. Roll the dough over so the seam is on the bottom, and place it back into the bowl. Return it to its warm spot.
4. Repeat this procedure every 30 minutes until the bulk fermentation is complete, according to your recipe.
That’s pretty much it. Can’t you just feel that gluten developing and fermentation chugging away right under your fingertips? That’s the stuff of life right there.
The rest of the dough’s life before shaping is fairly self-explanatory. Dividing your dough into the desired weights is your first interaction with your fully fermented dough. At this point it will be soft, warm and strong, starting its transformation into a loaf of bread. Most recipes call for a “bench rest,” which is transitional shape from sloppy cut piece to final shape. That shouldn’t take more than 20 or 30 minutes, and in some cases, like the Ciabatta, there is no bench rest at all. Each recipe’s instructions will tell you whether it’s necessary or not.
Finally, you’re on to shaping.
The Batard
Fold the left and right bottom “corners” of the round on top of each other, creating a bell shape. From the bottom, roll up the dough, pulling back and stretching the surface as you go. When you get to the end, use your fingers to pinch the seam along the table you now have a cylinder shape. For a “stubbier” version, gather the sides in more as you shape. For a longer batard, roll the sides with your hands to taper the ends.
