Focaccia – Me on the net

I have previously cooked Focaccia and blogged about it. That was a pretty simple bread recipe and I added nothing to it, so I decided to have another go and add a few frills.

The original recipe uses Rosemary and Parmesan cheese and I added neither of these to my first try at the recipe, purely because both were in short supply. This time I decided to forgo the Rosemary as once again there was none to hand. However there was bacon! Also, I thought that some tomato would brighten it up a little. So I had a recipe.

The first rising was done in the usual way, in a warm spot. For the second rising, the recipe says to put the bread into a cold oven with a dish of hot water. I decided instead to put the bread into the grill which sits above our oven, with the oven on and the actual grill off. This worked splendidly.

After the second rising I added chopped bacon and chopped tomato and dusted it all with ground parmesan. If it looks a bit “rustic”, some visitors arrived as I cooking so I was short of time, but I reckon it looks pretty good anyway!

IMG_20130408_161255 — Focaccia with bacon and tomato

IMG_20130408_161301 — Focaccia with bacon and tomato

By the way, it tasted good too!

focaccia1 — The focaccia loaf as it came out of the oven. (This is a cellphone picture and is therefore not very sharp).

Mmm, I decided to try a little more unusual bread this time, a flat bread instead of the more normal loaves. While focaccia is a risen bread and does use yeast, it is still categorised as a flat bread. I got the recipe here.

The recipe is fairly complex. You have to form a ‘well’ from the dry ingredients, add the yeast and water, let the yeast start working them fold in the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Then you raise it as normal, knock it back and let it raise in a cold oven with a dish of hot water below it. Then you turn the oven on and cook the bread. It seems to me that there is unnecessary complexity there, but I’ll see when I try it again.

focaccia2 — The focaccia loaf sliced. (This is a cellphone pictures and is not very sharp).