Sun-dried Tomato, Asiago, Rosemary & Olive Oil Focaccia

I was trying to think of what I could make with local herbs and/or spices for the June Bread Baking Day, and for some reason, focaccia kept popping into my head.  However, maybe that's because I hadn't made a foccocia since last year and I have a large rosemary plant on my front porch just begging to be placed atop a tender focaccia.  I don't think rosemary is necessarily a local herb, but people here do love growing it and its especially popular here at Thanksgiving and Christmas on roasts and large birds. 

As I was contemplating the possibility of making focaccia, I realized the only focaccia I had made thus far was a bread machine recipe that I had made once.  I had never made focaccia from any other recipe.  This definitely needed remedied soon. 

Hubby and I had really loved the first focaccia I had made topped with rosemary, garlic, and kosher salt, but I wanted to top this one a little differently.  I love to peruse the breads in the bakery section of The Fresh Market, a gourmet grocery that has locations scattered all over the central and eastern part of the United States.  I don't ever buy their breads (way too expensive), but I get ideas on what I'd like to make at home.  I saw a basketful of focaccia last week and the variety that caught my attention was the sun-dried tomato, asiago, rosemary and olive oil one.  It looked soooooo good!  The perfect toppings.

The recipe for focaccia that I chose was from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion.  The recipe looked interesting to me because of its list of ingredients, which included potato flour and nonfat dry milk, and because of the first step in its preparation.  I knew that the inclusion of potato flour and nonfat dry milk would definitely yield tender results. 

The first step listed in the preparation of this focaccia was to mix hot water and flour together and beat for several minutes to develop a smooth batter.  Hmmm, I'd never mixed boiling water and flour together before for a dough.  I wanted to give it a try.  When I did this, it didn't necessarily seem to me like a batter, but more like a paste:

It didn't look like much in the bowl, certainly not very appetizing.  I decided to cut the recipe in half so 1 cup of boiling water and 1 cup of flour didn't amount to much.  I added almost an 1/8 tsp of yeast to the batter (paste) and let it sit on the counter for 4 hours.  This was to develop flavor in the finished focaccia, as well as a soft interior texture.  After the four hours though,  it looked pretty much the same.  I had thought it would swell quite a bit, but it only got very slightly puffy.

Next, whisk potato flour with the remaining flour, dry milk, yeast, and salt.  I added this to the batter/paste, while beating it together and then put in 1 Tbsp of olive oil.  I beat this a little more by hand, which was hard, because it was so stiff and thick.  I put it into my stand mixer bowl and used the dough hook on medium speed for at least 10 minutes.  It seemed like I was adding alot of extra flour to the dough to get it to come together.  The directions didn't say what the finished dough consistency should be like, so I just had to hope I was doing this thing right.  Here's my dough after kneading and placing in a lightly greased bowl.

I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise on the counter for 30 minutes.  The dough increased by about one third and looked puffy.  I then pulled the sides of the dough up and over in a folding motion (while keeping the dough in the bowl).  I did this several times to release some of the gas, and then I let the dough rise for another 30 minutes. 

I drizzled 1 tablespoon of olive oil into my 8 inch round pan and smeared it around a bit.  I placed the dough into the pan, gently stretching it to fit, covered, and let rest for 30 minutes.  Stretched it a little more to fit the pan and then preheated the oven to 400°. 

Just before sliding the focaccia into the oven, I dimpled it with my fingertips, brushed it with a little olive oil, and topped it with my sun-dried tomato, asiago, rosemary, and just a pinch of kosher salt.

I had meant to put some of the sun-dried tomatoes inside the dough, but I kind of forgot.  Into the 400° oven it went.  In only about 10 minutes, I could smell the melting asiago from the upstairs landing.  I could hardly wait for it to finish baking.  It took about 25 minutes before the focaccia was a nice deep, golden brown all over. 

I don't know if the folding of the dough was correct or if I dimpled it properly, but who cares after it comes out of the oven looking like this:

Ahhhhh, it smelled sooooo good.  I'm glad I had made a light dinner of 1 fish fillet (that we split) and rice, because we each had a quarter of this and we highly considered consuming the entire thing, it was that good.  Here's one of the quarters,

Tender Focaccia

from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion

yields two 8-inch round or one 12- to 14- inch round focaccia

2 cups (16 ounces) boiling water

3 3/4 cups (16 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 cup (1 1/2 ounces) potato flour, or 1/3 cup (3/4 ounce) potato flakes

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces) nonfat dry milk

2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus

2 to 3 tablespoons to grease the pan and the surface of the dough

Well, it wasn't very creative or elaborate, but it was what I decided to do for this month's bread baking day.  I will however, continue to try to experiment with my fresh herbs over the next few months in some more breads. 



If you'd like to participate in bread baking day   #41, hurry and get baking your bread with local herbs and/or spices and go to My Discovery of Bread, the host, to get the details of how to submit your bread.

Dilly Bread (BBD #40)

The theme for this month's Bread Baking Day was announced as Bread with Curds.  Not being familiar with curds at all, I was a little worried at first, until I went back to zorra's announcement of this BBD, and read that we could use curds, cottage cheese, quark or paneer.  Whew!  I was relieved .  I love cottage cheese and have used it in bread in the past, just not very much.  My favorite way to eat cottage cheese is a small bowlful, with a large dollup of apple butter stirred in.  Mmmmmm.

Anyway, I went back to the internet and as I was looking around, I found a recipe at The Pioneer Woman Cooks called Jan's Dilly Bread.  I liked the looks of this recipe, because it brought back fond memories of the Cottage Dill Bread from the recipe booklet that came with my old ABM3100 Welbilt Bread Machine.  I made this recipe often (back when all my breads came from my bread machine).  I loved the taste of the dill and minced onion in the bread and how moist and soft it always turned out.  So here's the dilly bread I made for Bread Baking Day #40, 

Jan's Dilly Bread

slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Ingredients
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cups warm water
1 cup cottage cheese, heated to lukewarm
1Tbsp + 1tsp honey
1 Tbsp dried minced onion
1 Tbsp softened butter
1 Tbsp dried dill weed
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 whole egg
1 cup white-whole wheat (I used King Arthur Flour)
1 1/4 cup bread flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. 
Combine the warm cottage cheese, honey, minced onion, dill weed, salt, soda, and egg. 
Stir to combine.
Stir in yeast mixture gently, then add flour gradually, stirring gently.

I did all my mixing with my dough whisk and then at the end I turned the dough out onto my silicone mat to knead it a tad by hand, and to work in a little extra flour.  I placed the dough in a lightly greased, clean bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and let it rise for 1 1/2 hours until it doubled in bulk.  I turned it back out onto my mat, gently punched the dough down, gently shaped it into a round and placed it into a well greased, 9 inch cake pan.

I covered the dough again with plastic wrap and it rose for another 50 minutes on the counter.  It puffed up nicely, filled out the pan completely and rose above the top of the cake pan.  I then placed the pan into my preheated (350°) oven and baked it for ~30 minutes on a lower rack of the oven.  The bread started to brown a little too much, so after about 20 minutes, I moved the pan to a higher rack in the oven and it was done in 30 minutes even, though the directions had said 40-50 min.  After it came out of the oven, I turned the bread out onto my rack and brushed the top with melted butter.

This comforting bread went really well with Girlichef's Tomato Garlic Soup w/ Cheese Tortellini.  With the cooler weather we had this past week it made a perfect meal. 

To complete the perfect meal, for dessert we consumed the biggest Nutty Peanut Butter Cookies I've ever had.  These were made from the recipe on page 113, of The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread.  The cookies were about 4 inches in diameter.  (Hubby was being silly as I was trying to take pictures).



I had so much fun with this bread.  If you'd like to participate in Bread Baking Day #40, go to Zorra's blog to get the details.  If you'd like to see the roundup of all the different breads baked with curd, be sure to stop by Zorra's shortly after June 1 to view them.   

Cinnamon Raisin Buttermilk Bread (BBD #38)

This month for Bread Baking Day we are celebrating a no-knead festival with fellow bakers at Cindystar.  This more recent entrant into the culinary craft of making bread gives the baker an easier way to create the delicious loaves that grace our tables.  It is relaxing and refreshing to bake a loaf of no-knead bread occasionally, and some, like myself, actually started out by learning to make no-knead breads and then graduated on to more difficult things. 

The first no-knead bread I ever made was a honey wheat bread taken from the book by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois called Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day. However, I had never baked anything from their book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day and having heard mentioned by other bloggers that the buttermilk bread was a good one, I decided to check the book out from the library.  It took a couple weeks for me to receive a copy, since there is a waiting list at the library for this book.  I was originally thinking I wanted to do some sweet, ooey-gooey, enriched bread for this project, but then I saw that there was a cinnamon raisin bread that used the buttermilk bread dough.  That sounded good!

I have a nice big 6 qt bucket that I purchased at a local restaurant supply store that I always mix my no-knead doughs up in.  It's just easier to see how high the dough has risen with a clear, straight-sided bucket.

The beauty of making a no-knead bread, is the 

simplicity of the whole process.  On Sunday evening I simply mixed:

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

2 tsp salt

2 1/4 tsp sugar with
1 cup lukewarm water (~100°F or 38°C) &
1/2 cup buttermilk (I used low-fat)
 I sloshed this around a bit with a wooden spoon and then added:

3 1/4 cups unbleached all-purposed flour (KAF brand)

and with my large dough whisk I stirred until all the flour was incorporated.  I usually find

these no-knead doughs to be pretty wet, but this one
actually needed a couple extra teaspoons of buttermilk
to make the dough moist enough to mix in the last
bit of flour.  After a 2 1/2 hour rise on the counter, into the fridge it went to develop flavor and gluten over the next couple days.

On Wednesday I took my bucket out of the fridge, dusted the surface of the dough with a little flour and cut off and piece I thought looked like 1 1/2 lbs.  It was odd that I was expecting to have ~ 2 1/4 lbs of dough, but found that I only had ~ 1 3/4 lbs of dough, so I didn't have any extra dough to play with later. Oh, well.

I quickly shaped my dough, with floured hands, into a ball and set it on my rolling mat while I gathered my mise en place.
Using a floured rolling pin, I tried to roll the dough out into an 8 X 16

inch rectangle, but the darned dough kept springing back and refused to stretch any further than ~ 12 in.  I let the dough rest several times and kept trying to roll it out.  It wasn't quite as thin as it was supposed to be, but then maybe that ensured against any tears or holes.  I brushed the dough with a little egg wash and sprinkled on my cinnamon sugar (~4 Tbsp sugar + 1 1/4 tsp cinnamon) and my raisins.  I only used ~1/2 cup of raisins, but it could actually have taken more.  I also sprinkled on some Hershey's Cinnamon Chips.

I rolled up the dough from the short end, tried to pinch the seams together on the end and sides the best I could, and tucked the ends under.  It was tricky, but I picked up the whole log and placed it seam side down in the lightly greased 9 X 5 loaf pan.  I covered it with plastic wrap and it rested for 1 hr 45 min. on the counter.  Here it is before and after resting:

 

As you can see it didn't rise a whole lot, but it did definitely puff up and fill out the pan nicely.

I brushed the top of the loaf with a little of the leftover egg wash and sprinkled on some course sparkling sugar.  It was baked at 375°F for 35 minutes.  I took it out of the oven when it was firm and golden brown.  A little of the cinnamon and sugar had seeped out during baking, but that just made the whole kitchen smell that much better!!!  I immediately turned the loaf out of the pan onto a rack to cool:

This loaf had quite a nice oven spring and produced a very attractive, fragrant loaf.  I wish I could insert a cinnamon smell here or a scratch 'n' sniff icon.  My wheat and rye flours and various grains were feeling a bit neglected that day, but my husband and I were perfectly pleased with our Cinnamon-Raisin Buttermilk Bread!

                                       Thank you for visiting my blog for BBD#38, and make sure to stop by Cindystar to see what others made for this no-knead festival roundup!