Herbed Fougasse Without Olives (Mellow Bakers: November)

After being away for four days, all I could think of when I got home was how much I wanted to bake something.   So since I'd only completed one of the Mellow Bakers November breads so far, I decided to whip up the Pate Fermentee for the Fougasse on page 278 of Hamelman's book, Bread, late on Saturday night.  I guess I had too much pent up energy after not cooking, doing dishes, or even laundry for 3 1/2 straight days!  It was wonderful, and I had such a good time seeing my cousins (and their kids) and my aunts and uncles which I hadn't seen for 2 years.  I think we had ~42 people at our Thanksgiving get-together.

The original recipe for this Fougasse calls for olives to be mixed in w/ the dough at the end, but since I didn't have any olives in the house and since I love herbs, I decided to use Cathy's idea and add Herbes de Provence to the dough.  It seemed quite fitting to add this particular herb mix, since fougasse is a regional specialty of  Provence in France.  I only made half the recipe for this bread, so I only made one round fougasse and added 1 1/2 tsp of Herbes de Provence to my dough.  I also incorporated Cathy's change to increase the salt in the recipe since I omitted the olives.  For the half recipe I made, I added an extra half teaspoon of salt to the salt already called for.

This bread is so simple to put together and looks quite impressive when its finished baking.  I had already made a fougasse earlier using the traditional 'leaf' like scoring so I wanted to do something different this time.  I noticed the round shaped fougasse in one of the color photo plates in the middle of Hamelman's book and thought it looked pretty.

I also made some dipping oil to accompany our Herbed Fougasse.   I just used a heaping teaspoon of Herbs de Provence, adding in some red pepper flakes, fine sea salt, garlic, fresh pepper, and dried oregano and then some extra-virgin olive oil. Then it sat for awhile so the flavors could mingle a bit before we had dinner.

Hubby complained that the fougasse didn't quite go with the salmon patties I had on the menu for that evening's dinner, but it turned out to be a fabulous fougasse and it didn't matter what else was on the table.  The next night we finished off the fougasse w/ some Cream of Wild Rice Soup and we were in heaven with our bellies full of fougasse and steaming hot soup:)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!  I was thinking about my online baking friends all during my Thanksgiving break, grateful for their kindness and willingness to share baking experiences and also wondering what they were cooking up in their kitchens for the holidays.